Favorite New Fiction
from Small and Micro Publishers

To my mind, Victors is the perfect historical novel, weaving together richly developed characters, a compelling plot, and a solid grounding in historical details. Together, these elements bring important aspects of World War I history to life. They also make for a fast-paced, entertaining read.

The novel’s main character is David Pierce, a sergeant in the 369th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. Army, which is fighting for the Allies in World War I–era France. (The 369th–made up almost entirely of African American soldiers and also known as the Harlem Hellfighters–did indeed serve in the war, to great distinction.) Because black soldiers are barred from serving with white soldiers in the U.S. Army, David and his men fight with the French, who welcome their support without reservation.

In the Acknowledgments section of this deeply felt and thoughtfully crafted book, the author, Beth Kephart, writes: “Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday’s News begins with truth. It extends through fiction.” The truth consists of fragmented details of the life of her grandmother, Margaret Finley D’Imperio, who died on October 30, 1969, when Kephart was nine. “She was the great love of my life,” Kephart writes. “She was a mystery.” 

Kephart observes that decades after Margaret’s death, her brother arrived one Thanksgiving with “a box that included a handful of long-lost pages–family genealogy, notes from my mother’s cousin. … My Aunt Miriam’s few spare pages suggest the contours of my grandmother’s life”–for example, her favorite song and her employment at the Fleisher Yarn Company in Philadelphia. Yet at the time of the box’s arrival, so much about Margaret remained unknown, a deficiency that Kephart overcomes, to great effect, in the pages of Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday’s News.

Kephart immerses us in the vividly imagined life of Margaret (known mostly as Peggy in the book) and in scenes from Philadelphia at the time of the First World War, when Peggy was a teenager and at a turning point in her life. In the process, Kephart makes us care deeply about Peggy’s loves, dreams, and fears, creating a work that stands as a profound gesture of love for both her grandmother and the city of Philadelphia.

As a big fan of Al Sirois’s novel Murder in Mennefer, an absorbing and briskly paced coming-of-age story set in ancient Egypt, I was delighted to learn of a forthcoming sequel to it: Imhotep and the Quest to Kush. Like its predecessor, this new novel immerses us in the adventures and travails of an intellectually curious young man, Imhotep, who has developed a special interest in herbs and spells that can heal or improve the health of the sick. Imhotep’s interests and abilities bring him into the orbit of the politically powerful and those acting against them, which at times puts him in grave danger. In Imhotep and the Quest to Kush, challenges and dangers introduced in the first novel ratchet up to more perilous heights, creating an engrossing and suspenseful reading experience.

For some time, I’d been looking forward to reading this forthcoming collection of stories, which were co-authored by Kim Magowan and Michelle Ross. Having finished an advance copy of the collection, I’m delighted to highly recommend it. With dark humor, wit, and a sharp eye for human foibles, the stories explore what makes every kind of human relationship–from the ones we don’t choose to those with siblings, romantic partners, and children–challenging. It also considers why we seek connections nonetheless, and how we try to make meaning from even the messiest and most complicated entanglements.

As is the case with many book lovers, my “to read” pile is growing way faster than my ability to keep up with it. That means that I’m late to discovering some true gems. One such gem is Donna Gordon’s heartrending début novel, What Ben Franklin Would Have Told Me. With compassion, sensitivity, and insight, the novel explores the potentially life-changing power of connecting with others, even though it may first seem that we have nothing in common with them.

This inventive and affecting collection of speculative short stories takes on a wide range of themes, from the power that secrets can hold over us, to the long–and sometimes fraught–reach of motherly love, to the ways we learn to live with loss. The author explores these themes with insight, and a generous dose of humor.

The Last Whaler is a deeply moving novel that meditates on the grieving of parents following the loss of their son in an accident. 

The grief of the mother, Astrid, is profound.  To her lost child she says, “I long for those first blissful seconds of consciousness each morning when I wake to the thought that you’re alive, that any moment you and Birgita will run through the bedroom door and leap into bed with me and Pappa and snuggle under our warm down coverlet…. Oh, how agonizing that abrupt realization each morning that you are dead.” 

Following their son’s death, Astrid insists she accompany her husband, Tor, to Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Circle, where he has a whaling station. From mid-April to August the sun shines unceasingly, but in winter  darkness rules. There are many dangers, including polar bears, accidents, the brutal cold, ice crevasses, food insecurity, isolation, and the threat of sexual violence implicit in being a lone woman among men. 

For these reasons, Tor resists having Astrid accompany him: “‘The point is,” Tor says, “Svalbard can break you.” 

“Or heal me,” responds Astrid. “Heal us.”