Six Final Bossy Favorite Historical Fiction Reads from the Past Year
- The Bossy Bookworm
- 6 hours ago
- 6 min read
Six Final Bossy Favorites
If you follow this blog, you probably already know that historical fiction is one of my favorite reading genres, and this is the third of three historical-fiction favorite lists I'll have for you as I revisit my reading for the Bossy best of the best from the past year. For my first roundup, check out this link, and for my second, check out this one.
You can explore the twelve titles on My Very Favorite Bossy 2025 Reads to find out about my overall favorite reads from last year, or you can click to read about past Bossy historical favorites.
If you've read any of these titles, I'd love to hear what you think!
What are some of your favorite historical reads, whether from the past year or beyond?
01 The Jackal's Mistress by Chris Bohjalian
The deep bond that builds between an injured Union soldier and the Virginia woman who secretly takes him in is touching and complicated, and Bohjalian doesn't make Libby's dangerous choices feel too easy. The author was inspired by a true story.
Libby Steadman lives in Virginia on the edge of the Confederate-Union Civil War conflict. Her husband has been away fighting for the Confederacy since soon after they were married, and Libby is warden to her orphaned, strong-willed niece Jubilee. She's also living alongside a hired hand, Joseph, who became a freedman when Libby's husband's family reconsidered their stance on slavery, and his wife Sally. Together the family members work grueling hours milling grain for the Confederacy.
Then Libby finds a gravely injured Union officer in a neighbor’s abandoned home. Because she hopes that a Union woman would take pity on her husband in the same situation, she secretly cares for Weybridge's injuries, realizing that if Confederate soldiers were aware of his presence in her home, the family would be considered traitors.
The decision to take in Weybridge is morally clear to Libby, but the realities of the potential harm it could bring aren't lost on her. Bohjalian never makes the decision-making too easy, and the ending was not the neatly tied-up bow of a resolution I had begun to anticipate.
The story is based upon a real account of a Southern woman who helped a Union soldier during the Civil War.
I received a prepublication edition of The Jackal's Mistress courtesy of Doubleday Books and NetGalley.
For my full review of this book please see The Jackal's Mistress.
02 Junie by Erin Crosby Eckstine
Erin Crosby Eckstine's richly detailed historical fiction explores the life of Junie, an enslaved young woman in rural Alabama haunted by her sister's speaking, demanding ghost while she dares to dream of love and maybe even a life of freedom.
The Civil War is looming, and Junie is a sixteen-year-old who has spent her whole life enslaved on an Alabama plantation. She works alongside her family, caring for the plantation owners' daughter Violet, who is her own age, and gaining cursory exposure to Violet's studies of poetry and knowledge.
But Junie wanders restlessly at night, haunted by her sister Minnie's sudden death not long ago and by Minnie's ghost, which is demanding that Junie complete dangerous tasks and face truths she never imagined.
Erin Crosby Eckstine balances the horrors of living in an enslaved situation with the complex interpersonal relationships Junie forges. Without shying away from the often hopeless lack of autonomy, lack of power, and lack of say-so and constant fear of the enslaved, Eckstine builds a rich story of detail of life at the time. She also explores the complicated Violet-Junie dynamic, in which Junie is Violet's only company for many years, yet is at her mercy for all opportunities to learn, explore, and pause from backbreaking work.
For my full review, please see Junie.
03 The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
Much of The Safekeep feels claustrophobic, quiet, and hopeless, but unexpected shifts late in the story turn accepted histories on their heads, opening the door for newly imagined futures of the characters' dreams.
It's the summer of 1961 in the rural Dutch province of Overijssel, and rigid Isabel is a spinster in self-prescribed rigidity, adhering to strict schedules and a quiet life in her late mother's home--where she resides at the whim of her brothers, who, as men, own the house (but do not live there).
When her playboy brother Louis drops his gauche girlfriend Eva to stay--for at least a month! in their mother's old room!--Isabel is more than a little upset.
Eva's curiosity, enthusiasm for the world, and embracing of new experiences begin to seep into Isabel's experience. Isabel is initially annoyed, then inexplicably drawn to Eva--and eventually a torrid love affair begins between the women. Yet most of their feelings and hopes and thoughts are unexpressed. Theirs is largely a halting, unsure, almost silent, sexually driven relationship.
This felt almost gothic in its initial darkness and hopelessness, then took me by surprise by blooming into a story about coming into one's own and defying expectations to find healing and love.
I listened to The Safekeep, which was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, as an audiobook.
For my full review please check out The Safekeep.
04 The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap
Dunlap's debut novel explores early Edinburgh surgical schools, questionable methods of obtaining study subjects, a main protagonist's surprisingly believable entrée into body snatching, a forbidden love, and serial killers, and I was in for it all.
Dunlap's debut novel is dark, twisty, gothic, and it's set in 19th-century Scotland as fictionalized versions of real-life serial killers Burke and Hare are terrorizing Edinburgh.
James Willoughby is a naïve young medical student whose family fortunes have taken a negative turn, leaving him with a passion for studying medicine but no resources to pursue schooling. He becomes drawn into the underworld of body snatching when he seeks paid work to fund his studies--and begins to understand (and assist with) the process of obtaining cadavers for his surgery study. Ultimately, terrifyingly, his activities lead him to run into the cadaver-producing killers Burke and Hare.
Dunlap does a wonderful job of bringing a spooky, fascinating underworld of Edinburgh to life, while also exploring the burgeoning surgery and medical school experience, and, against all odds, building the somewhat-reasonable-feeling case for James's horror-turned-acceptance on the subject of mining graveyards for bodies to study.
I love Dunlap's writing and the way the author crafted this story. I'm definitely in for reading this author's future books!
Please click here for my full review of The Resurrectionist.
05 The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Whitehead, inspired by a real-life reform school that abused and terrorized boys for over a century, shares a tale of racial injustice, abuse and horrors, terrible fear, and the very real threat of death at the hands of openly, willfully cruel white men.
We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity and this sense of somebody-ness.
Elwood Curtis is a promising young man in 1960s Tallahassee. But when he hitchhikes with the wrong guy to his first day of scholarship university classes, he's unfairly sent to a boys' reform school, The Nickel Academy.
The "Nickel Boys" endure endless injustices, abuse, and horrors, including the looming threat of being "disappeared" out back, never to be heard from again. But as naive as it may be, Elwood persists in pursuing justice and clinging to the moral high road just like his idol Martin Luther King, Jr., and he is unwavering in his ideals regardless of the dangers. His best friend Turner is more savvy, careful, and jaded, while loyal to Elwood.
The Nickel Academy is based on a real-life reform school that, horrifyingly, abused boys for 111 years. The Nickel Boys doesn't shy away from infuriating, relentless, insidious, damaging, often deadly racial injustice and cruelties.
I felt a little manipulated regarding the "twist" Whitehead introduces late in the book, but the living out of an identity and living into an envisioned future is a powerful element.
For my full review of this book please see The Nickel Boys.
For other titles that center around race, please check out the books at this link. For more nonfiction titles that focus on race, please click here.
06 Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
Patrick Ryan's literary fiction traces decades of the messy, poignant lives of two families shaped by uncompromising societal expectations who work to connect across secrets, upended traditional roles, shocking loss, and unanticipated love.
In Patrick Ryan's literary fiction title Buckeye, which begins before World War II and spans to the end of the twentieth century, we begin with the story of a young couple in Bonhomie, Ohio, as they meet, fall in love, build a family, and struggle to stay connected.
Relationships shift, unlikely ties grow stronger, characters grow apart and find their way back together, and what seemed like indelible relationships fall away as Buckeye stretches across decades of life, choices, and loss.
The unexpected, unorthodox, secret-based links between two families shape the story (with a supporting cast made up of an older generation steeped in habit and old-fashioned values yet poignantly capable of change and growth). The found-family messiness was a highlight of the novel; the caring that emerges due to and among heartbreaking splits is particularly powerful.
Patrick Ryan is also the author of The Dream Life of Astronauts, Send Me, and young adult novels.
For more family stories you might like, please check out the Bossy reviews at this link.
For my full review, please check out Buckeye.
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