My Take on Historical Fiction

I promised to talk about historical fiction, so here it goes.

The book that got me going on this kick was "Between Shades of Gray" (Ruth Sepetys), but you would know this if you've walked into the MC and asked for a book recommendation. This is a really great book, but it doesn't have a happy ending. It doesn't necessarily have a bad ending, but just "an ending". I'm finding this to be true of a lot of the historical fiction that I have since read, and I'm sure it has to do with the fact that most of it is realistic historical fiction. It's life - how people lived, what people lived through, at a given point in history. Life doesn't always have happy endings. And if you add to that the fact that most historical fiction is written around defining points in history - times when really big things happened like wars and movements and such - bad things often happen.

BUT (and this is why I'm finding I love this kind of fiction so much) along with all the bad things that happen, there are people who manage to survive. Rise from the ashes, so to speak. So on the one hand, you have this story that shows just how awful human beings can be to each other and how much people can suffer at the hand of others, but on the other hand you have people who are resilient (able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions) and tenacious (persisting in existence; not easily dispelled), able to survive just about anything and go on with their lives. Blows me away! Especially when I realize that THAT REALLY HAPPENS.