Historical Fiction Read-alikes for The Four Winds
Code name Hélène
Lawhon, Ariel, author
2020
The Gestapo hears of a female operative with a remarkable ability to evade capture - putting a five-million-franc bounty on Nancy Wake's head. Escaping France, Nancy enters training with the Special Operations Executives, who transform her into Hélène. With a new mission in hand, Nancy is airdropped back into France as the deadly Madam Andrée - a powerful leader in the French Resistance. But no one can protect Nancy if the enemy finds out these different women are one and the same, and the closer to liberation France gets, the more exposed she will become.
Eternal
Scottoline, Lisa, author
2021
Elisabetta, Marco, and Sandro grow up as the best of friends despite their differences. Their friendship blossoms to love, with both Sandro and Marco hoping to win Elisabetta's heart. But in the autumn of 1937, all of that begins to change as Mussolini asserts his power, aligning Italy's Fascists with Hitler's Nazis and altering the very laws that govern Rome. In time, everything that the three hold dear is tested in ways they never could have imagined.
The exiles : a novel
Kline, Christina Baker, 1964- author
2020
Seduced by her employer's son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to 'the land beyond the seas,' Van Diemen's Land, a penal colony in Australia. Though uncertain of what awaits, Evangeline knows one thing: the child she carries will be born on the months-long voyage to this distant land. During the journey on a repurposed slave ship, the Medea, Evangeline strikes up a friendship with Hazel, a girl little older than her former pupils who was sentenced to seven years transport for stealing a silver spoon. Canny where Evangeline is guileless, Hazel--a skilled midwife and herbalist--is soon offering home remedies to both prisoners and sailors in return for a variety of favors.
The nickel boys : a novel
Whitehead, Colson, 1969- author
2019
The story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
Where the crawdads sing
Owens, Delia, author
2018
For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. Kya Clark is not what they say. Abandoned at ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh. With just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning the real way of this world. But while she could have lived in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world -- until the unthinkable happens.