Four Favorite Novels of American Historical Fiction Available at PaperBackSwap

PaperBackSwap provides a convenient and inexpensive way to exchange books, but sometimes I have trouble finding quality books that are available on PaperBackSwap. Many of the brand new bestsellers are not yet available, and I do not want to waste my credits on mediocre mass paperbacks. On of my favorite genres is American historical fiction.

If you are also looking for good historical fiction but having trouble finding quality books at PaperBackSwap, let me suggest some personal favorites that were available at PaperBackSwap when I checked. While these four novels are very distinct in style and story, they share the common element of examining America's historical struggles in addressing race and ethnicity in a multicultural society while telling more intimate stories of individual families. As a note, the copies available at PaperBackSwap are not mine because these books are each "keepers" for my personal library, and can now be good additions to your library.

The Known World, Edward P. Jones

An amazing debut novel by Edward P. Jones, this novel was included on the New York Times' list of the best American fiction in the past 25 years. The novel creates a fictional world in telling the stories of several generations in the lives of slaves and slaveholders in a fictional Virginia county. A central character, Henry Townsend, was a young slave whose parents purchased his freedom, yet used his own savings to purchase his own group of slaves. Jones carefully researched the previously little-known phenomenon of former slaves becoming slaveholders, and creates many rich characters among the slaves and residents of the Virginia locality.

The Plot Against America, Philip Roth

Another recent novel included on the New York Times' list of the best American fiction in the past 25 years, Philip Roth tells an alternative history of what could have occured if Charles Lindbergh had been elected President of the United States in 1940. Frighteningly believable despite the improbable story, Roth documents how the country could fall under control of anti-Semitic, Nazi sympathizer influences. The novel is striking in its scope, telling both the personal family story of the narrator and an alternative national history.

Cloudsplitter, Russell Banks

Another piece of historical fiction during the era of American slavery, Russell Banks' novel retells the life of revolutionary anti-slavery activist John Brown through the eyes of his son Owen Brown. The novel is far-reaching, from Owen's childhood helping his father hide and transport escaped slaves along the underground railroad, to the Browns' battles in Kansas in which they murdered and terrorized slaveholders, to the ill-fated attempt to capture the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia to arm freedom fighters in an attempted mutiny against slaveholders. The device of using the son retelling his father's story provides psychological insight into the motivations, passions, and flaws of John Brown while also establishing a creative tension in the familiar historical stories as the son battles his self-doubts and more moderate views than the fervor he sees in his father.

Ragtime, E.L. Doctorow

Already a classic, remade into a movie and Broadway musical, Doctorow weaves historical figures like Henry Ford, Harry Houdini, and Stanford White into the fictional lives of a Jewish immigrant father and daughter, a middle-class white Anglo-Saxan family, and an African-American couple. The lives of these previously separated families become interwoven as Colehouse Walker, Jr. demands justice from the disrespect he faces from bigoted local firemen by holding the J. P. Morgan library in New York City hostage.