November 2022 AuthorCat: Authors Who Have Set Their Books Against a Backdrop of Real Events

In fiction as well as non-fiction, authors often set their books against a backdrop of real events. These events can be battles and wars, environmental headlines and weather events, disasters, revolutions, crime or even the headlines conerning celebrities.

From the sinking of the Titanic to the Holocaust of World War II, the occurrence of hurricanes, tidal waves and earthquakes, even the lives and careers of Hollywood legends, famous criminals and politicians have served as material to build their stories around.

Whether you decide on a non-fictional book that deals with a headline event or a fictional story that takes an event and uses it as a backdrop, let us know what you are going to be reading and after reading, how the book dealt with the event. I am looking forward to the variety of books that we are sure to be reading (and taking a few book bullets along the way).

Please remember to add your book to the Wiki: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/2022_AuthorCAT

Here are a few examples to get you started:

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson – a non-fiction book that is often thought of as the opening shot for environmental activists
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward – Hurricane Katrina
The Nature of Fragile Things by Susan Meiessner – 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala – 2004 Tidal Wave in Thailand
A Touch of Stardust by Kate Alcott – the making of “Gone With the Wind” in Hollywood

I'm really looking forward to reading Finn McCool's Football Club for this. It's a memoir by an Irish guy living in pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.

I am planning on reading The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit which is about the building of the first atom bomb. I also have The Empty Glass by J. I. Baker set aside for next month. It is set against the backdrop of Marilyn Monroe's death.

I read a book earlier this year by Susan Meissner and like it enough to get The Nature of Fragile Things so I might read that. Or - although I've seen the movie - I might read Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly about the women mathematicians who helped with the calculations needed for John Glenn's flight into space.

My online reading group is reading Murder Trials, a collection of Cicero's speeches in court. I also have some biographies I could read.

I would like to read Kate Morton's The Secret Keeper set in WWII London.

I'm working on my second BingoDOG card, and might read something for it since I have a lot of nonfiction books. Possibilities include: All In, Billie Jean King's autobiography for LGBTQ+ author; Storm in the Mountains by James Moffett about book censorship in West Virginia for weather in title (a timely issue), or March 1917 by Will Englund for month in title.

Or, if I'm in good shape for BingoDOG, possibly read Little Lindy is Kidnapped by Thomas Doherty about the mass media coverage of that crime.

I've picked out a couple of likely ones for me

The Splendid & the Vile / Erik Larson
The Great American Dust Bowl / Don Brown

I am planning to read Last Witnesses by Svetlana Alexievich.

I've already snuck mine in a little early - The Butterfly Collector by Tea Cooper.

>10 JayneCM: If we're sneaking things in early I'm currently reading Edward Marston's Domesday Mystery series set against William the Conqueror's Domesday survey.

I may read Jacqueline in Paris by Ann Mah. This is a novelization of Jacqueline Kennedy's junior year at Smith college (1949) when she studied abroad. The year was spent in France.

I just read A Fall of Marigolds by Susan Meissner. This one is set against the backdrop of 9/11 and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire so can recommend this as fitting this category.

I've just finished Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York, a rare-for-me foray into true crime.

I read Seneca Falls Inheritance by Miriam Grace Monfredo. It's set around the Woman's Rights Convention of 1848 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Falls_Convention)

I read The Great Fire of London, a Penguin Little Black Classic which contains extracts from the diaries of Samuel Pepys. The first part contains entries about the Second Anglo-Dutch War as well as an outbreak of the plague in London. The second part deals with the fire in 1666.

I have completed The Wives of Los Alamos by TaraShea Nesbit. This is a novel about the women who followed their husbands to the desert as they were working on the Manhattan Project. Interesting, but the writing style of first person plural grew quite tedious by the end of the book.

I can fit Diana L. Paxson's The Hallowed Isle in this category (no, really!), as it purports to be set in sixth century Britain and another view of the historical King Arthur.

I've just started The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, the background event being the compilation of the OED

The Great American Dust Bowl / Don Brown
3.5 stars

This is a nonfiction graphic novel depicting the “Dirty Thirties” – the dust storms that hit mostly Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Kansas. It is geared toward a YA audience. It also gives a bit of background leading up to the conditions that helped create the dust storms and the consequences to the people and farmers in the areas affected. In addition, the dust travelled to the eastern coast!

It’s short, but it has some nice (colour) illustrations, some of them coloured in so dark to represent the lack of visibility during the storms. There were even a few things I didn’t know about (or if I’ve read about them (this is likely) I’d forgotten – like the electric charges in the air). There were even a couple of real photographs included at the end, but not only 1 from a 1935 storm, but one from 2011, as well.

The Colony by Audrey Magee is set in summer, 1979, against the background of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

I've just finished Finn McCool's Football Club, by Stephen Rea, about a pub football team formed by a bunch of expats in New Orleans just before Hurricane Katrina. There's a LOT of drinking, a lot of football talk, but also some fascinating and sometimes harrowing eye-witness accounts of Katrina and her aftermath. I really enjoyed it, despite not really being a football fan.

COMPLETED The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams, a historical novel set amongst the lexicographers compiling the OED and also referring to the UK's suffragette/suffragist movement and WWI.

I was disappointed with The Empty Glass by J. I. Baker, supposedly a noir story set against the death of Marilyn Monroe. Unfortunately, the author missed the mark and the book was rather a mess.

I finished another one that accidentally fits:

Frisch hapeziert - Die Kolumnen is a collection of magazine columns written and narrated by German comedian Hape Kerkeling that deal with celebrities, royalty, his life and events such as the election of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

I've read The Last Rose of Shanghai by Weina Dai Randel. The setting is Shanghai during the occupation of Japan in WWWII.

>22 Jackie_K: Thank you for the book bullet! I've added it to my wishlist. It is a perspective on Hurricane Katrina that I had never even considered and it sounds fascinating.

I read V2 by Robert Harris.

This takes place over five days at the end of Nov 1944 when a devastating weapon, the V2 rocket, was developed. WAAF's are chosen to work in Belgium to try and determine the launch sites so that they can be destroyed. It's an interesting part of the history of WWII but as a novel the plot and characters are a bit flat. Harris wrote many excellent novels, sadly this isn't one of them.

The V2 was built by slave labour and killed more than 20,000 during production. In action, more than 2,700 were killed in London and 1,700 in Antwerp making it less effective than anticipated.

December thread is posted at https://www.librarything.com/topic/345883

I read One or the Other by John McFetridge set during the Montreal Olympic Games 1976. I enjoyed it immensely.

I read The Chanel Sisters set in part during WWI.

I read Enchantments by Kathryn Harrison for this challenge. It is set against the murders of Rasputin and the Romanov family in 1917-1918 Russia

Omaha Beach: D-Day, June 6, 1944 / Joseph Balkoski
3.75 stars

This is a detailed account, much of it using primary sources, of the invasion of Omaha Beach in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. It was primarily American soldiers who landed here; Canadian and British soldiers landed on other beaches that day.

I actually liked the author’s narration a bit better than the many primary source quotes he used to illustrate (and expand on) the things he was talking about. Partly, that may have been the smaller font of the quotes vs my (getting older) eyes! I tended to sometimes skim over some of those quotes. But the amount of detail and research that went into this is amazing. Very much like Cornelius Ryan’s account of D-Day as a whole (published in 1959, and used in Balkoski’s research, as well).

I've read Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg which features both Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second women appointed to the Supreme Court, and Nina Totenberg, one of the women pioneers at NPR. The book emphasizes friendships, and the chapters pertain to various aspects of friendships instead of being chronological. Ginsburg and Totenberg were friends long before Ginsburg was appointed to the court; it started when Totenberg was new to journalism and wanted to find out more about a legal brief which Ginsburg had written. All through their friendship, they respected each others careers, and did not interfere with them. Totenberg also discusses friendships she had with other justices; much of the book is about Totenberg's career.

I've read two books that meet this challenge.
No Land to Light On which used the US travel ban of 2017 to shine a light on the trauma that caused to so many families.
The Sentence by Louse Erdrich is set in 2020 in Minnesota. The pandemic and the racial unrest around the killing of George Floyd play a prominant role is the unfolding of the plot.

The Doctor from Hell / Genoviva Ortiz
3.5 stars

Harold Shipman was a doctor in the U.K. from the late 1960s to the late 1990s. In that time, he murdered over 200 people (likely the number is much higher). He is the serial killer who has killed the most people ever. This is a short biography of him and his deeds. He was actually very well-liked, but things came tumbling down with the death of another well-liked and influential woman in her community.

This is meant to be for any level reader, so it is kept short and simple. I still thought the story was good, but because it was kept short, there were plenty of details and victims that could have been expanded on. It’s not tale of blood and guts murder, but a doctor who (for reasons unknown) killed many of his own patients.

Deleting this one. Decided it didn't really fit (I read a few others that fit, anyway). Will remove from the wiki, as well.

The Last High by Daniel Kalla
Kalla's book about the search for a source of a highly dangerous fentanyl batch on the streets of Vancouver has a veracity that makes the story all the more real. If nothing else, it will educate those who need to know how dangerous this drug is, if they didn't know already. I thoroughly enjoyed the story which was interesting, not preachy, and the characters were all credible. The only good thing that has come out of the crisis is that there have been more organs donated making organ wait lists the shortest they have ever been.

The author is an emergency physician in Vancouver so knows what he's talking about.