Historical Fiction

Waterland, Graham Swift’s sweeping 1983 novel, has a strong sense of regionalism as reflected in its title. This British publication set in a low-lying region of eastern England reads like American gothic fiction, with flawed characters; themes of grotesque, fatalism, and madness; and occasional levity to break the intensity. The main plot chronicles the plights of two intrinsically intertwined but decidedly dissimilar families. Swift’s complex, intriguing characters struggle to navigate their problematic pasts and the... Read Waterland Summary

Ella Cara Deloria’s 1988 novel, Waterlily, is an examination of the Dakota Native American way of life. The novel follows a Dakota camp circle called White Ghost—a group composed of several families that live and travel together. While the novel provides perspectives from many different characters, the author places the greatest focus on Blue Bird and her daughter Waterlily. At the novel’s outset, Blue Bird gives birth to Waterlily by a river while her camp... Read Waterlily Summary

We Need New Names is a work of fiction by Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo. It’s her debut novel, which garnered critical praise upon its publication in 2013. Bulawayo’s narrative centers around 10-year-old Darling and her group of friends, in a Zimbabwean shantytown called Paradise, as the group perceptively observes life around them. When Darling later moves to America (a hope she’s long had), she’s confronted with the America of her dreams as it clashes with... Read We Need New Names Summary

We Were the Lucky Ones, written by Georgia Hunter and published in 2017, is a historical novel based on the actual experiences of the author’s family during World War II. Hunter’s grandfather, Addy Kurc, came from a family of Jews in Radom, Poland. The book follows the story of Addy, his parents Nechuma and Sol, and his siblings Genek, Mila, Jakob, and Halina, along with their spouses, as they struggle to survive the Holocaust and... Read We Were the Lucky Ones Summary

What Is the What is a 2006 novel by Dave Eggers. The story follows Valentino Achak Deng, one of tens of thousands of boys displaced and/or orphaned during the Second Sudanese War, which spanned nearly two decades, from 1987 to 2005. While a novel, What Is the What has been called by Eggers a “fictionalized autobiography.” As Deng explains in his introduction to the text, they decided that it should be considered a novel, because... Read What Is The What Summary

Published in 2003, Carla Trujillo’s novel What Night Brings is set in the late 1960s in a town outside San Francisco. The novel centers on Marcía Cruz, an 11-year-old Chicana girl struggling with her sexual orientation and domestic abuse amidst a larger backdrop of the Vietnam War and a crisis of faith in America.What Night Brings is Trujillo’s first novel, but not her first published work relating to its central themes. She edited an anthology... Read What Night Brings Summary

... Read What the Wind Knows Summary

When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405–1433 is a nonfiction book published in 1994 by Louise Levathes. In a narrative that predates the voyages of Christopher Columbus, Levathes examines a three-decade period in the early 15th century when China launched seven major sea voyages. Levathes holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and worked for ten years as a staff writer for National Geographic. In 1990, she... Read When China Ruled the Seas Summary

... Read When the Apricots Bloom Summary

When the Elephants Dance is Filipino-American writer Tess Uriza Holthe’s first novel. Published in 2002, it is based on Holthe’s father’s experiences growing up in the Philippines during World War II. The novel centers around a group of friends and neighbors seeking shelter in a cellar and sharing traditional moralistic Filipino legends that illustrate their resilience and the importance of stories for survival. The title is taken from a saying offered by one of the... Read When the Elephants Dance Summary

Japanese-American author Julie Otsuka’s historical fiction novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, was published in 2002. It is a short book, falling at the boundary between a novel and a novella, chronicling the experience of one Japanese family at an internment camp during World War II. The book is broken into five uneven sections: “Evacuation Order No. 19,” “Train,” “When the Emperor Was Divine,” “In a Stranger’s Backyard,” and “Confession.” The first three sections are... Read When the Emperor Was Divine Summary

... Read When the Stars Go Dark Summary

... Read When We Cease to Understand the World Summary

Where the Crawdads Sing is the debut novel of Delia Owens. Set in the marshes of coastal North Carolina from the 1940s to the 2000s, the novel is Southern literary fiction that tells the story of Kya, a little girl who comes of age alone after her family abandons her.  Published in 2018 by Putnam, the novel was a New York Times bestseller and a selection of Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine book club. In 2022 it... Read Where the Crawdads Sing Summary

White Teeth is an award-winning novel by Zadie Smith, published in 2000. The novel, which was developed into a four-part miniseries for British audiences in 2002, follows two men from different backgrounds who meet and become friends during World War II.Plot SummaryWhite Teeth opens on New Year’s Day, 1975, with the attempted suicide of a middle-aged Englishman named Archie Jones. Following his failed marriage, and in despairing of his generally mundane existence, Archie flipped a... Read White Teeth Summary

Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Jean Rhys’s best-known novel, is a retelling that contemplates the life of Bertha Mason Rochester, a minor character in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre (1847). Rhys made a career out of writing novels and short stories that contemplated the lives of unconventional women. She wrote and published most of her fiction in the 1930s, then went out of print for several decades. The rise of feminist and postcolonial literary studies brought... Read Wide Sargasso Sea Summary

Wild Seed is a science fiction novel written by Octavia Butler in 1980. It is sequentially the first book in a sequence of “Patternist” books written by the same author, though it was the fourth book published in that series. These include Mind of My Mind (1978), Clay’s Ark (1984), Survivor (1977), and Patternmaster (1976). Wild Seed takes place over different centuries and continents, beginning in Africa in 1690 and ending in America just before... Read Wild Seed Summary

... Read Winter Garden Summary

Wish You Well (October 2000) is a semi-autobiographical novel by crime writer David Baldacci. The book falls into the categories of Family Saga, Coming of Age Fiction, and Historical Mystery and is a departure from Baldacci’s thrillers, which he is primarily known for. Baldacci is the author of more than 40 novels, most of which became international bestsellers. Several have also been adapted for film. His first book, Absolute Power (1996), was adapted into a... Read Wish You Well Summary

... Read Wish You Were Here Summary