Historical Fiction

The book depicts Ingrid Barrøy's childhood on a tiny island off the northern Norwegian coast at the beginning of the twentieth century. At the heart of the book is the struggle, and belonging, which comes with such isolation.

When hundreds of priests gathered in the tiny Icelandic town of Ísafjörður in 1925, things did not go as planned. Jón, the youngest and most beautiful bishop in Iceland’s history, had intended to disprove the country’s growing spiritualism. Instead, a mountain collapsed, god appeared (in all too small clothes), water turned to wine, fish grew as large as men, and, did everyone just strike deals with the devil?

When Japan outlaws Christianity in the sixteen hundreds, a few Portuguese Jesuit priests try to sneak into the country to investigate the fate of their teacher, as well as continue to spread their religion. The book is written in large part as a collection of letters from one of these priests, and we get to follow him during his treacherous journey. I would recommend Silence to you who enjoy slow books, religious arguments, and preferably are knowledgeable of Jesus' journey in the Bible.

I went into this book essentially blind and became very pleasantly surprised. It centers around a black woman, Dana, from the 1970s who several times gets transported back in time to a farm in the antebellum south. It is written as a memoir, and its strength lies in re-living the slavery on such a farm from the eyes of a (at the time of writing) modern woman.