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I thought I was reading historical fiction about an Anglo-Saxon’s journey in the afterlife…(THE SUMMER COUNTRY by Lauren Willig, narrated by Nicola Barber)

Somerset in south-western England, the “Land of the Summer People.” Source: British Heritage.

I have never heard of Lauren Willig before, so when I picked up THE SUMMER COUNTRY, I honestly thought I was reading a tale about an Anglo-Saxon person’s journey to the afterlife. (The Anglo-Saxon’s referred to life after death as “the summer country.”)

If you have read this tale of intrigue, lies, desperation, greed and a bold bid for freedom in 19th-century Barbados, you can imagine how surprised I was. However, Lauren Willig’s sensitive tale of slavery, and the way she immerses you in the sticky heat of the Caribbean drew me in.

Bussa who led the largest Slave rebellion in Barbadian history. Source: Wikipedia.

I listened to this novel, and at first it was a little difficult to keep track of the parallel stories of Charles & Robert Davenant from 1812 to 1816 and the story of Emily Dawson and her search for her mother in 1854. As usual, the background tale of the rising of 1816, and Charles Davenant’s complex relationship with his brother and sister-in-law proved to be more gripping than the more “modern” tale set in 1854. However, the 1854 narrative braid was saved by the character of Emily herself, as she dealt with the men fawning over her, no doubt because she was the unexpected heiress to Peverills, a famous estate on Barbados.

Lauren Willig is the author of several novels, and her experience shows in the telling of this one. I loved the way this novel ended. Five stars. #laurenwillig #thesummercountry

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1434 ~ The Year that a Magnificent Chinese Fleet sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance by Gavin Menzies, narrated by Simon Vance

View of the Ponte Vecchio (old bridge), a medieval bridge over the Arno river. Photo 31004862 © Ermess | Dreamstime.com

Like many readers, I found this volume disappointing after Gavin Menzies’ stunning debut 1421.

Empress Wu as a young woman, when she was a concubine to the Emperor of China. This image, while it may not be 100% accurate, does give some idea of the exotic nature of a Chinese concubine’s dress and hair styling. If even one had appeared in 1400s Florence, she would have caused a great deal of comment. However, such comments are absent from the historical record. Source: “The Empress of China,” a 2014 Chinese television series based on events in 7th and 8th-century Tang dynasty, starring producer Fan Bingbing as the titular character Wu Zetian

For starters, this book was a great deal dryer than 1421, filled as it was with descriptions about various kinds of machines as well as a dissertation on the declination of the stars. It is almost as if the author decided to use his leftover research from 1421 in this volume. Unfortunately, unlike 1421, this book lacked a narrative arc, and Mr. Menzies’ decision to end with a perambulation around a remote corner of Spain to discuss the Conquistadores of the early 1500s was puzzling.

But even more of a problem were the ideas that author Gavin Menzies put forth:

Is he right to say that Leonardo da Vinci was merely a gifted illustrator, rather than the amazing inventor of parachutes, helicopters and airplanes that we know and love?Is it true that the Ponte Vecchio in Florence is merely a copy of a Chinese bridge?Could it be possible that a large crowd of Chinese concubines and their children suddenly appeared in Florence one fine day in 1434, without anyone remarking on the fact? If Mr. Menzies is right about this, then how come that not one of the many gifted artists resident in Florence in the 1400s painted them?

None of the above are backed up with enough evidence to make them even remotely plausible. Three stars.

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1421 ~ THE YEAR CHINA DISCOVERED AMERICA by Gavin Menzies narrated by Simon Vance

How utterly fascinating it was to read about a long-forgotten Ming Emperor of China, who, in 1421, sent off a flotilla of 800? 900? huge ships, built of teak, their red square sails making them ride in front of the wind.

A Chinese junk (sailing ship) with its fully battened sails. Source iStock.

Their mission was to journey to the ends of the earth, to bring all the peoples of the earth together in One Glorious Confucian Harmony – and pay tribute to the Emperor of China.

Accordingly, these fleets of ships sailed to India, Africa, South America, Antartica, North America, Greenland, the Arctic Circle, Norway, and Siberia, before finally returning in around 1423. The only place they didn’t go was Europe, which was perhaps fortunate as they would most probably have faced torture and execution for not being Christian. (Think “Game of Thrones” to get an idea of what living in 1400s Europe was like.)

But life is full of ironies. Instead of being rewarded for their amazing feats, especially given that these square rigged ships could only ride IN FRONT OF the wind (NOT tack into in, as ships with triangular sails can do) they were met with a cold silence, their stupendous deeds obliterated by the powers-that-be who had overthrown the old emperor, and trampled his ambitions into dust.

Accordingly, author Gavin Menzies had to be extremely resourceful and persistent to find traces of these voyages, and piece together what must have happened using his skills as a Naval Submarine Commander to work out which way they must have traveled to all these various places.

This volume is full of amusing anecdotes. My favorite was about the Columbus brothers, Christopher (the explorer) and his younger brother Bartholomew (who was a cartographer.) Starting in the mid-15th century, around 20 or 30 years after the Chinese ships sailed the world, the Portuguese decided to find the shortest route to China, mainly because the Silk Road had been shut down due to political instability in the East. (The great city of Constantinople – now known as Istanbul – was captured by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.) And so the Columbus brothers were employed by the government of Portugal to aid in this enterprise.

Portrait of a Man, said to be Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) painted by Sebastiano del Piombo in 1519, thirteen years after Columbus’ death. Source: Wikipedia. Bartholomew Columbus (1461-1515), Christopher Columbus’ younger brother, the cartographer (map-maker.) His position at the Portuguese court made it easy for him to steal a Chinese map. This image is taken from “Narrative and critical history of America, Volume 2” by Justin Winsor. Source: Wikipedia.

I do not know what happened next, but there was some kind of falling out between the Columbus brothers and the King of Portugal. In any event, the brothers left in disgust for the Court of Spain, but not before Bartholomew Columbus stole a copy of one of the maps made by the Chinese during their voyages of 1421-1423. This map had come to Portugal almost certainly through Venice, probably from a merchant named Niccolò di Conti (not sure of spelling, as I experience this as an audiobook). The Portuguese, who had been doing their own explorations under Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) realized immediately how important this map was, and kept it a secret from the rest of Europe, especially from the King and Queen of Spain (their natural competitors for the sea route to China.)

But somehow, Bartholomew Columbus managed to slip away to Spain with his brother AND the stolen map. By this time, both brothers were broke, and looking for an aristocratic patron. Their previous attempts to woo the monarchs of Spain to their cause had not been successful because Ferdinand and Isabella had been too busy driving both the Jews and the Moors out of Spain (an operation of Ethnic Cleansing usually referred to as the Reconquista.)

But now, it was 1492, Granada had just been subjugated, and the monarchs were now free to turn their attention elsewhere. And so Bartholomew Columbus decided to go in for a little forgery, to convince the Spanish monarchs that the shortest way to China from Portugal was to the West (rather than the East.) In order to do this, he drew an entirely fictitious piece of land which made it seem impossible to get to China via the Eastern route, and then the brothers subtracted 6,000 miles from the circumference of the earth (neatly getting rid of the Pacific Ocean.)

“The Return of Christopher Columbus” painted by Eugene Delacroix in 1839, shows Columbus standing on the steps leading up to the thrones of Spain, while Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon look on. Source: Wikipedia.

The Spanish monarchs, not knowing any better as they had no knowledge of the Chinese maps which the Portuguese kept as a closely guarded secret, agreed to the Columbus brothers’ fraudulent request and funded their voyage to China. And so Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue in Fourteen Hundred and Ninety-Two.

When he returned, he claimed he had been to India, thus giving Native Americans their unwanted name. But it turns out that Columbus must have known exactly what he was doing, because he was following the stolen map his brother had given him. For (according to his logs) when his sailors complained and threatened to mutiny due to their fear of sailing off into the complete unknown (and possibly falling off the side of the earth) Columbus told them that he knew the way, because he had seen it marked on a map.

Indeed he had, for the Chinese had been there before him. Five stars.

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Poor Grace just wants to play her violin. But life has other plans for her. After leaving behind an ardent suitor in Washington DC and journeying to Berlin Germany to study with the best violin pedagogue of the day, Grace acquires two more suitors: melancholy, rich Charles Phelps and German aristocrat Carl von Lietzow. What’s a young woman to do? Whatever she decides, someone will be heartbroken…

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Lady Cecylee had an affair with an archer on the Rouen garrison…in the summer of 1441. Her one night of passion changed her life, her family’s life and the Game of Thrones-like jockeying for power in late 1400s England. Get your discounted copy of THWARTED QUEEN a historical romance set in the fairy-tale castles of France and England!

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The Other Einstein by Marie Benedict narrated by Mozhan Marno

Mileva Marić, aged 20, around the time she began her studies at the Zurich Polytechnic.

This fourth novel by Marie Benedict (the pen-name of lawyer-turned-writer Heather Terrell) sets the tone for many of the novels that follow, in that it explores what it’s like to be the highly-intelligent wife of a very famous man.

Mileva Marić, born in Serbia to well-to-do parents. was so outstanding at math that in 1891, when she was fifteen, her father requested special permission to enroll her as a private student at the all-male Royal Classical High School in Zagreb.

Subsequently, she enrolled in the Zurich Polytechnic, where she was the lone woman out of a group of six. And that is where this novel begins, with Mileva’s arrival in Zurich, her excruciating first day in class (she was not only female but Serbian) and how out of all the people there, the only person who was kind to her was classmate Albert Einstein.

I would say that around half of the novel was taken up with Einstein’s courtship of Mileva Maric, the birth of their illegitimate daughter Lieserl, and Lieserl’s mysterious disappearance from the record shortly after they eventually married in January 1903.

Mileva Marić with husband Albert Einstein in 1912, when she was 35 and he was 32. Within two years of this photo, she left him.

Lieserl’s death or disappearance casts a shadow over the rest of the book, which details the deteriorating relationship between Mileva and Albert. It turns out that Einstein, often seen in public as charming and affable, was in fact extremely misogynistic in the treatment of his wife. Not only did he essentially steal her ideas on the theory of relativity, which he put forth in his famous 1905 paper that won him the Nobel Prize, he also drew up a list of obnoxious conditions that Mileva had to adhere to if she was to continue being his wife (or he would abandon her.)

But Mileva had enough of ten years of sublimating her talent to be her husband’s maid. She called his bluff and walked out in the summer of 1914, taking their two sons with her. For the rest of her life, she lived in Zurich, Switzerland.

It is interesting to note that when Albert finally received his Nobel prize for that 1905 paper on relativity, he sent the entire monetary award to Mileva. Even though he never gave her the credit that was her due, she did at least get the money.

CONDITIONS

A. You will make sure:

1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;

2.. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;

3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

1. my sitting at home with you;

2. my going out or traveling with you. 

C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way; 

2. you will stop talking to me if I request it; 

3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

my going out or traveling with you. 

D. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.

~ Albert Einstein’s list of conditions for his wife Mileva.

THE MAP THIEF by Heather Terrell, narrated by Brian Nishil, Thom Rivera and Hillary Huber

Like her previous novel THE CHRYSALIS, this novel is also a parallel plot novel, or rather a triangular plot novel with three distinct time periods represented: the early 1400s, when the Chinese sent huge fleets of ships to map the world, the 1490s, when Vasco da Gama relied (secretly) on these maps to navigate all the way to India from Portugal, via the enormous journey around the African peninsula, and the present day when Mara Coyne is (yet again) on the loose looking for criminal activity in the art world.

Source: Indian Express article from 7 August 2016 by Adrija Roychowdhury titled “Old Chinese Map suggests Columbus did not discover America.” Based upon work by British author Gavin Menzies (“1421” and “1434.”)

Last time, it was the faked provenance of a painting. This time it is a stolen map. An ancient map from 1420s China showing the entire world which is snatched from right under the nose of the Chief Archaeologist who discovered it near the Silk Road in China.

Model of a treasure ship (Hong Kong Science Museum). Source: Wikipedia.

And so Mara is called in to investigate this mystery. Naturally, what she uncovers doesn’t please most people. She manages to infuriate the Chinese authorities AND a Portuguese viscount. But, in the end, it is Mara who dishes out a Solomonic pronouncement on exactly who gets what. Five stars for an unputdownable novel.

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THE CHRYSALIS by Heather Terrell, narrated by Carrington Macduffie

I have read many of Marie Benedict’s novels. Some of them (BRIGID OF KILDARE and THE MYSTERY OF MRS CHRISTIE) I absolutely loved. Others (LADY CLEMENTINE) not so much. This debut novel (THE CHRYSALIS) has quickly become one of my favorites.

One thread of THE CHRYSALIS is set in 17th-Century Holland, famous for many things including its wonderful paintings. Photo 30079107 / Amsterdam © Veronika Galkina | Dreamstime.com

For starters, it is most unusual for one of those parallel plot historicals set in the past and in the present day to have a present day plot that is so compelling that it outshines the activities of the past. I think this is the only novel I’ve ever read to have done this feat.

The Allegory of the Catholic Faith, by Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) a possible source for the painting at the heart of THE CHYRSALIS. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, source Wikipedia.

Although some readers found Mara Coyne’s attraction to Michael Roarke too gooey, and just couldn’t believe that such a tough litigator would fall for his too-obvious charms, I found it utterly believable. After all, they had an intense friendship when they were both college students at Georgetown University, when they were both fascinated by art history, and used to have long conversations arguing back and forth. In those days, Michael was the idealist and Mara the more pragmatic one.

I thought that author Ms. Terrell (who now writes under the pen-name Marie Benedict) did an excellent job of delineating the problem that some of us face when meeting old friends, namely, do we know this person or not? If we really liked the person, we tell ourselves that s/he hasn’t changed. But, as Mara found out to her cost, ten years can make a huge difference. I loved the way that Ms. Terrell sowed a teeny-tiny seed of doubt by having Michael’s eyes grow cold during the courtship phase of their relationship. That little detail prepared the reader for what was to come.

If you have never read this author, you are in for a treat. THE CHRYSALIS is truly a stunning debut! Five stars.

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