February means Valentine’s Day, a celebration of love and family. What better way to honor that tradition than by exploring love that endures through generations? So this month’s historical fiction will look at sagas. These sweeping tales of love, loss, challenge, triumph, betraya, and trust pull the reader into the orbit of the protagonist family’s home and friends, detailing the changes wrought by events internal and external over the passage of decades. We begin with CHINA COURT by Rumer Godden. In a compelling intermingling of past and present, Godden presents us the richly vivid life of the Quin family, from the establishment of their Welsh estate, China Court, in the early nineteenth century into the twentieth. Beginning with founders Eustace and Adza, she moves back and forth to upstart village girl Ripsie who marries one Quin brother, and on through the story of Ripsie’s granddaughter Tracy. Weaving in the dramatic outside events that impacted all their lives and the private, personal crises that made and broke apart relationships, Godden creates an intimate portrait of a family over a one hundred fifty year span. The family at the heart of the next saga, C.L. Skelton’s HARDACRE, starts with rags-to-riches Sam Hardacre….
