Last year, 21 of the books I read were historical fiction.
With each book, I studied quality of the prose, the strength and complexity of the characters, how vivid and real the setting felt, and how much the story stuck with me. Then I boiled it down to the ones that were most striking to me in all these categories.
So I’m excited to share this list of the top 5 historical novels I read in 2022 with you.
The Secrets We Kept by Lara Prescott
Read this if: You love capital “L” literature with an emphasis on language and style.
When I find a popular book I want to read, I’ll often request both the audiobook and the physical book, to see which one becomes available first. In this case, it was the audiobook. I find that listening to a book is a very different experience from reading with my eyes. But it didn’t take me long to realize this book was different from many of the other historical novels I’ve read in the last few years.
The Secrets We Kept is a Cold War story—something I’ve been starting to research for my next novel, so I like to see how other writers treat the subject. Plus, it’s about Boris Pasternak and his novel, Doctor Zhivago, which is one of my favorite books ever. Writing it got Pasternak’s mistress thrown in the gulag. It was banned in Russia, but the CIA smuggled it back into the Soviet Union as a weapon against the Red Scare. The Secrets We Kept finally shares the stories of the women behind that operation, who were forgotten by history, as they almost always are.
Every few sentences I was floored by the beauty and specificity of a line, the kind I wish I’d written, while remaining just out my reach. The kind of line that feels like silk slipping through your fingers.
It’s well-researched in a way that doesn’t make you think about how well researched it is. The research serves the story, which is intricately woven, at times daring, and truly takes the reader on a journey that, despite the heavy subject, was a joy to be on. Prescott’s creative choices all serve a purpose, from using the third person plural to crossed-out chapter headings. They feel fresh and like the author put a great deal of care and talent into crafting this piece of art.
2. The Book of Lost Names by Kristen Harmel
Read this if: You like sneaky, clever Resistance stories with relationships that make you feel good and also a little sad.
There was something about this one . . . Over the last 2–3 years, I’ve read so, so many World War II novels. I admit I was feeling a little bit of fatigue around spies and survivors and victims and villains. But, even though bad things were happening, and people were being heroic in the face of them, The Book of Lost Names felt like a respite.
This was also an audio read. I wish I had the physical copy so I could study how Harmel did it, but I think it was the sense of hope that was behind it all. It is ultimately a love story. Normally, I’m not a love story kind of gal, but I feel a certain lightness lately when I read them, and these days I want that. The Book of Lost Names is sweet but never saccharine. It is complicated and tragic and hopeful.
The narrative perfectly balanced a story about a book—which I will always be a sucker for—and a story about two people trying to figure out how to be together. And the ending, though predictable, stayed with me for a long time.
3. Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson
Read this if: You’re fascinated by ancient human culture.
I might be alone in this, but lately I’ve been obsessed with ancient human history. I’m endlessly fascinated by humanities’ roots and how far back they run. We like to think we’re sophisticated, better than animals, but I maintain that we’re not. We got lucky when we discovered fire and our tongues and vocal cords evolved to allow us to speak, and things took off from there. So what was life like back then, in the time before the written word, when we were just beginning to be human?
I was thrilled to learn about Kim Stanley Robinsons’ Shaman from the Between the Covers podcast.
Set during the Ice Age, what stands out to me from this read was not so much the plot as the lives of these ancient people. How they lived together in small communities, gathering once a year to meet with the other nearby communities, to share news and dance and get drunk and intermarry. How they coexisted with Neanderthals—for some reason, it gives me an odd feeling to think of human-like but not actually human beings. How they made art and had spiritual beliefs closely tied to nature.
There’s so much we can’t know about those times, but Robinson filled in the gaps beautifully. How each person had a role to fill in their community whether they wanted to or not (like becoming a shaman). How they had their own system of counting. How they wondered what happened after death.
It’s rare to see such rich world-building in historical fiction, but it’s no surprise considering Robinson’s a science fiction writer. I loved noodling over the world he made.
4. Cilka’s Journey by Heather Morris
Read this if: You want to feel like you’re in a gulag. In a good way.
Most people have heard of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, but have you heard of the companion novel, Cilka’s Journey?
It tells the true story of a Jewish woman who was imprisoned at Auschwitz, where she was forced to sleep with an SS officer. When the war ended, her Russian liberators decided she deserved to be imprisoned for sleeping with the enemy. She then spent many years in the gulag. This novel is about those years.
It was horrible and fascinating to learn about the uniquely brutal life in the gulag, where summers were even worse than winters, where male prisoners each got to “pick” their female prisoner, where the female prisoners formed a community to look out for one another. Cilka used her advantages to help others to such an extent that I found my mind boggling over that fact that this was a real woman. The eponymous tattooist in her first book said Cilka was the strongest woman he’d ever known.
5. The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
Read this if: You like herbal revenge stories and fast-paced narratives.
In the crowded market that is historical fiction, The Lost Apothecary is a breath of fresh air.
Set in eighteenth century London, it follows a female apothecary who specializes in poisoning men. Women come to her to get rid of their husbands, brothers, fathers, etc.
I love a story involving herbs, as you’ll see from my recently completed novel, when it meets the world, so I was immediately drawn to this book. To me, herbs are power. Specifically, they’re how women have been able to access the power of nature throughout history.
The tale is riveting. I zipped through it in just a few days. I even stayed up late to finish it, which I rarely allow myself to do anymore. I just had to know what would happen, and when I found out, what struck me was how the dual timelines created striking parallels. The stories of two women, one in present day and the other in the eighteenth century, came together in ways unpredictable, thought-provoking, and delightful.
BONUS: Other magnificent historical novels that need no introduction but you should still definitely read if you haven’t already:
Circe and Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: Retellings of Greek mythology with gobsmackingly good prose.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi: A devastating, sprawling tale that follows two lineages of the African diaspora across hundreds of years.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: Sometimes books are art—this World War II story is a masterpiece.
The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd: The imagined story of who Jesus’s wife might have been, written beautifully.