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      Hooray!  It's Women's History Month! I love historical fiction. I write historical fiction. These two facts are something of a miracle, considering that I grew up disliking historical fiction.
     OK, let's back up a little bit here. As I have said in (way too many) other posts, I am a compulsive
reader.  I have always loved history, although not the kind that in my social studies books. According to those texts, the only important women in American history were Molly Pitcher (who may not have been a real person), Betsy Ross and Dolly Madison. Their contributions to history were (maybe) bringing water to soldiers, sewing a flag, and rescuing George Washington's portrait in the burning of the White House during the War of 1812.
    There had to be some other women who were famous for somewhat less domestic feats. Lots of us of "a certain age" fell in love with biography reading those Childhood of Famous Americans books, which I just discovered are still being published. Ah ha! Here were the female role models I was looking for; astronomer Maria Mitchell, Mary Lyons who founded Mount Holyoke College, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female American physician, Annie Oakley, Olympian Babe Didrickson, choreographer Martha Graham. My all time favorites are still Clara Barton and Amelia Earhart. These women broke the rules, stood up to society, danced their own dance, went where no woman had ever gone before (sorry Star Trek fans.)
    But what does all this have to do with historical fiction?  A lot.  When I was in elementary school, female characters in historical novels were far and few between. Granted, the very nature of society before the mid-20th century relegated women to the most passive of roles in both life and fiction.
     Fictional boys tamed wild animals, survived in the wilderness, rode the Pony Express. Girls sewed samplers, looked after siblings and were pretty much under domestic house arrest. Not only that, but girls were rarely the main characters.  Finding a female character who didn't spend the whole story dipping candles and churning butter was a true treasure.  I still own The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz (autographed, too!). The main character, Ann, appealed to me because she missed her old home when her family moved to the Pennsylvania frontier.  My family moved a lot, too. Also, Ann was the first character I encountered who kept a diary! The minute I returned Ann's story to my third grade "class library shelf," I was off to Woolworth's to buy my first diary. (A side note here; not only is The Cabin Faced West still in print, it's also an e-book! Not to shabby for a book published in 1958.)
     There was Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink, who roughhoused with her brothers, and played pranks on her sissy girl cousins. In one memorable episode, she wins a logrolling contest. Caddie was my kind of girl!
     Like every other girl I knew I worked my way through Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie series.  I learned a lot about hog-skinning, sewing samplers (again!) and making molasses candy. OK. Fine. Laura was a tough minded girl who frequently got in trouble for her "boyish" ways. As far as I could tell, the only "boyish" thing about Laura was her determination to what she wanted and not always as she was told. The series seemed awfully predictable to me; Mary, the good sister, Laura, the "naughty one", stern Ma, fun-loving Pa (who I never once imagined to look like Michael Landon) and lots of bad crops, insect plagues and unfortunate weather.)
     I had just about given up on the Ingalls when I came at last to The Long Winter. At long last, Laura's  strong mind and sturdy body took front and center as she and her father kept the family alive during an endless winter of blizzards in the Dakota Territory

Ice by Sarah Beth Durst. Simon & Schuster / Margaret K. McElderry Books. 2009. Review copy supplied by publisher.

The Plot: Cassie loves her life at a remote Arctic research station with her father. It's an isolated life of cold, of snow, of science, just Cassie, her father, occasional visits from Gram and a variety of visiting researchers.

On her eighteenth birthday, science ends and fairy tales come true. Cassie discovers that her favorite childhood story -- the whimsical tragic story of her mother being the daughter of the North Wind, Cassie the promised bride of the Polar Bear King, and her mother held captive by trolls -- is true.

The polar bear has come for her.

The Good: Cassie is an interesting main character. She's stubborn and driven; close to the father that raised her; and so content with life at the research station that she doesn't even want to go to college. Rather, she wants to complete a remote degree so she never has to leave the only life she's ever known.

Her mother's fairy tale past and bargains change everything Cassie thought she knew. Her mother didn't die in a blizzard; rather, Gail truly was the adopted daughter of the North Wind who bargained away her unborn child to the Polar Bear King in order to escape the North Wind and live with Cassie's father. The North Wind found the family and angrily attacked the family, blowing Gail to the country of trolls where she has been captive ever since.

So in other words, Cassie's only parent has lied to her. Not only that, but Cassie's relationship with her father is closer than many teens because it's not just been the two of them; it's been the two of them in a research station that rarely houses more than a half dozen people. Cassie has modeled her future on continuing in her father's footsteps.

All that is shattered, not only because the Polar Bear King has claimed her for a bride, but also because her father lied.

This is a fairy tale, so of course Cassie and the Polar Bear fall in love. This is a fairy tale, so at times (times being at night, in the dark) Polar Bear is human.

But Cassie doesn't lose herself in Bear and their love. She returns home, having arranged her mother's rescue, only to realize that not only is her mother a stranger, but her father with her mother is almost a strange new person. Pre-Polar Bear, Cassie was a child who, like a child, imagined never leaving home. Now, with return of the mother, Cassie is forced out of her childhood and into an adulthood of her own. Cassie isn't a pinball, bouncing back between parents and Polar Bear husband. Cassie even finds a way to bring her own interest in science and research to Polar Bear's destiny as a collector of souls.

Of course, life is not that easy. It never is, whether you're the human bride of the collector of polar bear souls or not. So just when Cassie settles into a happy life with Polar Bear, disaster strikes. Remember how Cassie arranges her mother's rescue from trolls? Polar Bear rescued the mother, in return,

Heist Society by Ally Carter. Disney Hyperion Books. Publication date February 2010. Young Adult. Reviewed from Uncorrected Advance Proof from publisher.

The Plot: Katarina Bishop, 15, ran away to boarding school with the hopes of leaving her family and her past life behind her. Alas, just when she thinks she is out, they pull her back in.

The family business? Stealing. Long and short cons, pick a pocket or two.

A powerful criminal believes that Kat's father, Bobby Bishop, stole his art collection. The only way to save her father? Find the real thief and steal back the collection. Kat is rusty from being out of the game; and it's more than a one person job. She's going to need all the help she can get to pull off this heist.

The Good: What is good? Every. single. page. Likable characters that you want to spend time with, plenty of humor, great action, a wee bit of art history, a variety of exciting locations, strong female characters, and cute guys. What more does a reader want?

You know the crew from Ocean's Eleven? Now imagine that they had kids who are now teenagers; teens raised in the world of cons and stealing. That is Kat's world; the one she tried to leave, because, you know -- stealing. Kat gets dragged back to save her father (when this movie is made, and I cannot believe it's not optioned yet, George Clooney has got to play Bobby Bishop). Kat's resurfacing in this strange world is a brilliant literary choice of the author; because as Kat is reintroduced to her old world, so is the reader introduced. This avoids the sometimes necessary but always awkward infodumps of background information; instead, it's information woven into the story and Kat's story and Kat's return.

Just as you cannot watch the crime capers such as Ocean's Eleven and The Sting and think "but that's ILLEGAL" (cause that type of thinking, friend, ruins the fun) so too can you not think that way about Heist Society. Even if you were going to get all moralistic, Carter gives a story line where the so-called owners of the art are as far from sympathetic and morally correct as you can get.

Kat is smart and knows her stuff, as befits

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear. Soho Press 2003 (Hardcover) Penguin Books 2004 (Paperback). Reviewed from audiobook from ListenNJ.com

The Plot: 1929. Maisie Dobbs opens up her own London office as a Private Investigator. Her first client -- someone who wants to find out if his wife is cheating on him. Maisie, thinking of her education, background, and training, internally sighs at how mundane this is but takes the case. Nothing is what it appears to be, however. Maisie is not an upper class woman, despite her accent, bearing and education; and this, her first solo case, is about people and a country haunted by the Great War.

The Good: I've heard great things about the Maisie Dobbs books forever but just got inspired to make time for them. ListenNJ.com has audiobooks for the iPod, so it seemed like a good idea to read a book I wanted to and play with the downloading.

Love this series! Now I have to carve out time to read the rest of the books in this brilliant series.

Who is Maisie? A working class girl who was in the Downstairs world, that slipped into the Upstairs life based on education and drive. Part of the mystery of this first book is finding out exactly how that happened. It's not linear; we begin in 1929 with the investigation, get some clues into Maisie's life, then slip back to 1910 and a young teenager who has lost her mother and been put into service because it's the best her father can do for her. Long story short, her employers realize her potential and she ultimately ends up going on to Cambridge. With the entry of England into the Great War, Maisie interrupts her education to become a nurse.

Maisie's backstory is fascinating; and the Great War shadows everything. It matures Maisie; and it changes the society she lives in. Her Downstairs/Upstairs background, combined with her own war experiences, and her education and training, create a uniquely talented investigator with great insights into motivation.

The mystery was well told; Maisie's investigation was interesting; the various characters were nuanced; and I'm looking forward to reading more in this series.

I had one quibble with the book; but with a series, it may be something that is addressed later. It also may well be that my issue isn't with the book, but with the realistic burdens and challenges Maisie faces. As a teen, Maisie has to be twice as good as everyone about her and this isn't recognized in the book. Yes, an education is provided but she still has to perform her full workload as a maid. So, she has to work full time PLUS pursue knowledge; and in that education she has to show herself to be twice as dedicated and smart as any upper class teenager, because she is studying while working full time. When it seems like Maisie is overwhelmed, the book diagnoses the problem not the dual workload but rather the pressure of navigating between two classes. While I don't doubt the truth of the class issues, particularly for this time period, on Maisie's behalf I wanted someone to recognize she had to be twice as dedicated as the next person to achieve what she did.

Downloading review: Overall, it took much longer than I'd anticipated. The actual download had to be done twice because it didn't all download correctly the first time; then it turned out I had the wrong application OverDrive media console; and then it took a very long time to transfer to my iPod. The iPod mini worked OK for listening to the book; the main drawback was that halfway thru, I turned it on to find out it hadn't saved my place and I had to figure out where I was. I'm not sure if this was all human error (and wireless) or typical.

© Elizabeth Burns of A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy