LIT LISTS: Nine historical novels featuring real people as main characters

Friday, April 8, 2022

Nine historical novels featuring real people as main characters

After studying journalism at Texas A&M University, Jody Hadlock was a television news reporter and anchor in Bryan-College Station, Texas; Charleston, South Carolina; and San Antonio, Texas.

In addition to writing, her other passion is advocating for people with special needs. She met her son, Marius, while reporting on Romania’s orphanages post-

communism and saw firsthand the effects of the lack of nurturing and nutrition on the young orphans. For several years Jody served on the board of directors of North Texas Special Needs Assistance Partners (SNAP), a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities live the fullest lives possible in their communities.

Hadlock lives near Fort Worth with her husband. The Lives of Diamond Bessie is her first novel.

At CrimeReads she tagged "nine authors and their works that will take you back in time to another place, another way of life, all told from the points of view of real people who may not have lived to tell their stories but are told now through others’ pens." One entry on the list:

Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall trilogy

If there’s one novel anyone who loves history should read, it’s Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall. Followed by Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror and the Light. Each reminds us how brutal life was back in the days of Henry VIII, when he was chopping off heads left and right. Even though you know how the story is going to end for Anne Boleyn and eventually Thomas Cromwell, the main protagonist of the trilogy, you’re still turning the page as if you don’t know what’s going to happen and you can’t wait to find out. And the writing. Mantel’s sentences are like nesting dolls. She packs more into a sentence than any other writer and unpacking each one is always a pleasurable experience.