The Familiars, by Stacey Halls. Mira, 2019

It’s 1612, in the reign of King James I, and Fleetwood Shuttleworth (a real historic person) has not had an easy life. She’s 17 and enduring her 4^th pregnancy, the first three having ended in miscarriages and a still birth. She’s found a letter from a doctor to her husband saying that she will not survive another pregnancy. Her first husband, who she was married to at age 4, molested her. She’s never had a friend in her life.



By accident, she meets Alice Grey, a poor young woman who knows herbs and midwifery. Fleetwood becomes convinced that Alice is her only hope of surviving the coming birth, and ending with a live baby. But her husband’s best friend, Roger Nowell, is investigating witches (the Pendle Hill witches, to be exact), and his eye is on Alice. Convicting some witches would give Roger brownie points with the king, and enrich his retirement. In time, Fleetwood finds herself regarding Alice as a friend. She’s willing to go to any lengths to save her from being hung.



The pace is very, very slow in the first half, and then speeds up dramatically. There are several threads running through this novel, some of which don’t come to light until well into the story. Fleet herself starts out as rather a boring character- immature, naïve, and uneducated- who matures and grows through the story. At the start, she has no idea how the ‘other half’ lives, and is shocked at the conditions that exist outside her manor house. But she learns fast. I give five stars for atmosphere; the descriptions of the forests, people, villages, and homes are wonderful. While I loved Alice, the characters I was less taken with. I disliked Fleetwood’s husband a great deal, even at the end when all the threads are tied off. In the end, I give it four stars. This is Hall’s first novel; I assume her writing will mature and I will give any second book she writes a try.

Margaret the First, by Danielle Dutton. Catapult, 2016

This is a rather odd little book. Margaret the First is Margaret Cavendish, a duchess that lived during the British Civil War and Restoration. A rather fey child, she became a lady in waiting to the Queen, and stayed such during the Queen’s court in exile. At court she met and married William Cavendish, a man 30 years her senior. It was an enduring love match.

She became noted for her style of dress- she would design her own dresses, taking inspiration from the mossy forest floor or the like. During the time in the Low Countries, she met many noted thinkers, scientists, writers, and philosophers. When they were able to return to London, where there were books written in English, she became an autodidact, reading voraciously. She wrote almost ceaselessly- plays, poems, essays, and a novel or two- but of course she was not widely read; what could a woman write that could be of consequence, after all?

Margaret was a conundrum. She upstaged the first showing of her husband’s play by showing up at the theater topless, and stated that what she wanted was fame. Her conversation- or, more apt, her holdings forth- swung from physics to fairies. She wrote what might be considered the first science fiction novel, and was the first woman (*only* woman for 200 years) invited to a meeting of the Royal Society of London. She ranged from horribly shy to never shutting up. She is almost portrayed as bipolor in this novel, ranging from deep lows to frantic highs.

This is not the kind of historical fiction where the history takes precedence. The focus is on Margaret, with history happening around her in the background. At only 160 pages and with fast paced writing, the book can be read in a few hours. While not my favorite book in the world- I’d give it four stars out of five- it was a few hours well spent. 

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The Weight of Ink, by Rachel Kadish. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017

In the 1600s, Esther Velasquez is denied by Judaic law the right to read or write religious or philosophical works. In the 2000s, historian Helen Watt is having things mansplained to her by the department head. Some things never change.

Esther, a Portuguese Jew whose family fled to the Netherlands when Portugal expelled the Jews, is in a unique position. Not only does she long to read and write, she doesn’t want to marry and take the standard position of mother and housekeeper. She and her brother live with a blind Rabbi, and the brother is the official student, reader, and writer for him, with Ester listening in. But when they move to England and the brother leaves, Ester is the available scribe. And no one will find out a woman is doing the transcription. And it’s perhaps a gray area; she is, after all, just writing down a man’s words, not her own.

Helen Watt receives a call from a former student. He and his wife, while renovating an old house, have found a cache of old papers, looking to be in Arabic, Hebrew, or Spanish. Could Helen come and take a look? She’s not eager; she doesn’t imagine they could be anything important. Probably old shopping lists. But she’ll take a look, taking a grad student to do the grunt work. The papers are from 1691, and Helen realizes that they could be an important find. Now she must race against the rest of the history department, her own worsening physical state, and her impending mandatory retirement to get the papers bought, stabilized by the university library, and translated. The story that emerges is one no one imagined.

“Weight of Ink” has been compared to A.S. Byatt’s “Possession”, and it does certainly have similarities. But “Possession” is in large part a tale of two passionate love stories, while “Weight of Ink” certainly has passionate love stories in it, they are minor streams merging into the larger river of Ester’s desire for education and her evolution from scribe to something much more.

This is a great literary mystery, with new things turning up right up to the end. I really liked Ester; I warmed up to Helen as I found out more about her. The cast of characters is huge; not all are likable but that’s how life is. There are a lot of issues dealt with; homosexuality, pregnancy out of wedlock, Jewishness in the time of William and Mary, women’s issues, class, interfaith relationships, and philosophy all both entertain and educate the reader. While the book is slow in places, I never found it boring and it was actually a pretty fast read for a 600 page book! Five stars out of five. 

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The Orphan Mother, by Robert Hicks. Grand Central Publishing, 2016

Set in the summer of 1867, the story follows Mariah Reddick, freed slave and town midwife, in her quest to find out who killed her son Theopolis. Theopolis is a cobbler with dreams of entering the politics of Reconstruction era Franklin Tennessee. Killed at a political rally before he could even take the stage and speak, he is accused of having killed a white grocer. Needless to say, the government team sent to investigate is only interested in finding out who killed the white man. Helping her is George Tole, a freeborn black from New York, who is new to town and has a big secret to keep. Also on Mariah’s side is Carrie McGavock, her former owner and a historical figure. Mariah and Carrie are still negotiating a new relationship; Mariah was Carrie’s personal slave when they were children and went with Carrie when she married. They have always been close; as close as it can be when one person owns the other and holds the power of life and death over them.

The story is told from the points of view of Tole and Mariah as they look for answers. Tole’s quest is not the same as Mariah’s, though, as we learn near the end, although ultimately their aim is the same. These are complex characters; the whites around them may see them as just their occupation- the midwife, the cobbler- but they are far, far more than that. There is a lot going on beneath the surface most whites see. I should note that this is not a blacks vs. whites story; it’s just how it was in the South during Reconstruction. There is good and bad in all in this book.

This is not an easy book to read; there is a lot of human ugliness laid bare. But it was a can’t-put-it-down book for me. Very moving and tense.

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