Sponsored by Algonquin Books, publisher of Paper Bullets by Jeffrey H. Jackson.
“A Nazi resistance story like none you’ve ever heard.” —Hampton Sides, author of In the Kingdom of Ice. In 1940, on the German-occupied island of Jersey, two women waged a daring anti-Nazi campaign. Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe (better remembered today by their noms de plume, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore) drew on their skills as Parisian avant-garde artists to write and distribute “paper bullets”—wicked insults against Hitler, calls to rebel, and subversive fictional dialogues that demoralized the Nazi troops. The untold true story of this courageous couple is an inspiring lesson about love and resistance.
Welcome to Read This Book, a weekly newsletter where I recommend one book that I think you absolutely must read. The books will vary across genre and age category to include new releases, backlist titles, and classics. If you’re ready to explode your TBR, buckle up!
This week’s recommendation is a backlist historical fiction by someone who has quickly become a favorite author!
Outrun the Moon by Stacey Lee
Content warning: Natural disaster, death, racism
Mercy Wong is a Chinese-American girl living in Chinatown, San Francisco in 1906. She’s got big ambitions, which isn’t always easy for a girl whose sex and race bar her from opportunities. But she wants to be a successful businesswoman and take care of her family, and she isn’t about to let anyone stand in her way. To that end, Mercy knows she needs a good education and connections, which is how she ends up bargaining her way into St. Clare’s School for Girls, a prestigious finishing school for wealthy young society ladies. Although attending means leaving her family behind to live across town and enduring racism from the other girls, Mercy is optimistic that attending the school will change her life—and it does, but not in the way she expects.
I first picked this book up because I was looking for a title that would satisfy the 2020 Read Harder challenge of reading a book about a natural disaster, and I found myself falling head over heels for Mercy and Stacey Lee’s expressive, vibrant writing. Lee makes history come alive, including so many tantalizing details about her time and place that I know she must have done a load of research, but that research never feels packed into the narrative. In my opinion, the best historical fiction uses historical details to help build place and character, and Lee does this brilliantly.
Like many readers, I went into this novel knowing that it would be about the 1906 earthquake, but Lee takes a good amount of time setting up the story, so the earthquake doesn’t occur until nearly halfway through. Reading about the destruction, fear, and ingenuity that followed was utterly fascinating, especially considering that the world is going through its own (albeit very different) catastrophe. Lee writes about not only what the survivors endured in the immediate aftermath, but about how disaster can bring out the best and worst in people. Sometimes people lash out due to fear, but sometimes shared hardship allows people to reach across social, racial, and economical barriers. Lee has a talent for writing about the stark realities of historical discrimination and injustice with hope, reality, and a bit of optimism, and if you like this book I highly recommend that you reach for The Downstairs Girl next! I’m also excited for her new 2021 release, Luck of the Titanic!
Bonus: I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated by the talented Emily Woo Zeller, and I highly recommend that listening experience!
Happy reading!
Tirzah
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