[Earlier this
month, I began teaching my graduate
American Historical Fiction: Practice and Theory class for the fifth time,
this time entirely online. So this week I’ll briefly highlight (busy with
teaching and all) a handful of exemplary historical fictions and related
contexts. Share your own favorite historical fictions or authors for a
boundary-blurring crowd-sourced weekend post, please!]
I’ll admit
it, for a long time I hated Banks’ novel; not because of anything really about
it, but because my fallback plan had always been to write a historical novel
about John Brown from the point of view of one of his sons, and then Banks went
ahead and did that and did it amazingly well. But you can only hold onto your
hate for so long before you realize that an amazing historical novel about
fathers and sons, family and nation, violence and spirituality, the coming of
the Civil War, and heroism and villainy in American identity is worth
celebrating. Even if it did crush your dreams a bit.
Next historical
fiction tomorrow,
Benc
PS. What do you
think? Other historical fictions or authors you’d highlight?
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