And as Maeva's elusive past begins to beckon, she realizes that she must help her daughter navigate and control her own singular birthright if the child is to survive the human world.īut the protective love Pieter has for his family is threatening the secure life they have slowly built and increasingly becoming a tragic obstacle. But unlike Pieter, who is blinded by love, Maeva is aware that the villagers, who profess a rigid faith to the new God and claim to have abandoned the old ways, are watching any sign of transgression-and are eager to pounce and punish.įollowing both mother and daughter from the shadows and through time, an inquisitive shapeshifter waits for the Fates to spin their web, and for Maeva to finally reclaim who she once was. And Maeva's adoring husband, Pieter, wants nothing more than for his new family to be accepted by all. Maeva tries to hide the girl from the suspicious townsfolk of the austere village of Ørken, just as she conceals her own magical ancestry from her daughter. Upon every turn of season, her mother, Maeva, worries as her daughter's peculiarities blossom-inside the root of the tiny child, a strange power is taking hold. In the hinterlands of old Norway, Leidah Aldestæd is born blue-skinned, with webbed hands and feet.

They don't feel the danger coming, riding in on the wind. Ahead, our list of some of the most-anticipated historical fiction books of 2021-plus the best new additions so far.An utterly gripping love story set in nineteenth-century Norway, about a woman rescued from the sea, the fisherman who marries her, their tiny and unusually gifted daughter, and the shapeshifter who follows their every move, perfect for fans of Alice Hoffman, Yangsze Choo, Eowyn Ivey, and Neil Gaiman. The list goes on, including YA picks and crime fiction.īut, perhaps Ruth was too hard on herself: By understanding the past, we're able to draw the present into sharper focus. And you'll gain perspective on wars, from the Trojan to World War II. You'll venture to Depression-era Texas and Indiana in the novels The Four Windsand Zorrie, and jam out to the sounds of Jazz Age Chicago in Wild Women and the Blues. You'll find books set in '90s Brooklyn apartments ( Concrete Rose ), an estate in Haiti in the 1860s ( Libertie ), and the mansions featured in Pride and Prejudice ( The Heiress ).

Most of the time, her head is buried in papers that somehow seem realer to her than the surrounding world.Īs you look ahead to some of the best historical fiction books 2021 will have to offer, and you might feel the same as Ruth: More interested in the past than the present. As a historian, Ruth occasionally needs the reminder.

'History is well and good, but the present is worth noticing, too,' Ruth, a character in Andromeda Romano Lax's novel Annie and the Wolves, tells herself.

Becoming leidah by michelle grierson