For a historical fiction series it's hard to beat John Jakes, but it's hard to beat Zane Gray's Spirit of the Border, Man of the Forest, Betty Zane and other books featuring Wetzel or Betty Zane in pre-western wilderness adventures that take you as the reader back in time to the days when towering old-growth forests dominated the landscape, and the bold, brave, adventerous mountainmen and early settlers survived by their strength, cunning and wits when stalked by wild animals from wolves to grizzly bears and cougars, or equally brave, fierce and cunning tribal warriors and hunters.
Nobody sets the scene and takes you there better than Zane Gray, and wrote many of his books in the early 1900s, before most of the old growth forest were cut down, and he takes you there so you can see it, taste it, smell it, feel it and sense its mystery and the subcultures of creatures that inhabited those great forest realms.
Ah, those were wonderful books to lose yourself in, but my all-time favorite historical fiction book was "A Day in the Life of Ivan Desinovich." I read that book about a day in Ivan's life in a Soviet Gulag work camp nearlly 30 years ago, but it made a lifelong impression. I often think of Ivan, who had a good day when he was fortunate enough to obtain a bowl of gruel and a pair of socks to help keep his feet from freezing in one of the infamous Siberian camps where millions of Russians were sent to work and die under Stalin in the 1940s. It's a story of survival and looking for and finding tiny threads of hope and reason to go on with life. When things get me down and I start feeling sorry for myself, I think if Ivan.
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