Bound Together 2023: Fiction: Historical
Lovers of this genre have treats in store from authors Isabel Allende, Reyna Grande, Naomi Hirahara, and Marianne Wiggins.
THE WIND KNOWS MY NAME, By Isabel Allende
BALLANTINE BOOKS • JUNE 2023 • 272 PAGES • $28 HARDCOVER
The author of The House of the Spirits—a 2023 Alta Journal California Book Club selection—returns with an extraordinary novel about two young children who leave their countries to escape war, poverty, and violence. We meet Samuel Adler, who in 1938 flees Nazi-occupied Vienna without his mother and travels to England, and we get to know Anita Díaz, who in 2019 leaves El Salvador with her mother only to be separated from her when they reach the United States. It’s a singular story of two characters searching for family and love in an unstable world.
PROPERTIES OF THIRST, By Marianne Wiggins
SIMON & SCHUSTER • AUGUST 2022 • 544 PAGES • $28 HARDCOVER
Large in scope and grounded in history, this novel tells the story of rancher Rocky Rhodes, who has protected his eastern Sierra land through the deaths of his wife and son and while under threat from the Los Angeles Water corporation. When the federal government erects a Japanese American internment camp alongside his ranch, Rocky fears that the war that took his son is much closer to home.
A BALLAD OF LOVE AND GLORY, By Reyna Grande
WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS • MARCH 2022 • 384 PAGES • $17.99 PAPERBACK
A star-crossed-lovers romance worthy of a fandom, Reyna Grande’s novel follows Mexican army nurse Ximena Salomé and Irish soldier John Riley, who find themselves swept up in a torrid affair during the Mexican-American War. John created and leads the St. Patrick’s Battalion, composed of Irish soldiers who defected from the U.S. side of the war, while Ximena cares for the wounded and contends with a promise she made after her husband’s murder. Grande’s memoir, The Distance Between Us, was a 2020 Alta Journal California Book Club selection.
EVERGREEN, By Naomi Hirahara
SOHO CRIME • AUGUST 2023 • 312 PAGES • $27.95 HARDCOVER
The Ito family, whom readers first met in Naomi Hirahara’s novel Clark and Division—a 2023 Alta Journal California Book Club pick—are back. Forced from their Southern California home and into an internment camp during World War II, then relocated to Chicago, where tragedy struck, the Itos have now returned to California, where they struggle to find a way to rebuild their lives in Los Angeles’s gutted Japanese American community. When they’re faced with murder and domestic violence, daughter Aki is on the case, doing what she must to protect her family.
