Thoughts on: The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Leveen

Arti­cle first pub­lished as Book Review: The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Lev­een on Blog­crit­ics.

About:
The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Lev­een is a his­tor­i­cal fic­tion novel tak­ing place before and dur­ing the Amer­i­can Civil War. Very lit­tle is known about Mary Bowser, a free slave who went back into Vir­ginia to spy for the Union.

The pub­lisher is giv­ing away one copy of this book— use the form at the end of the post to enter.

• 496 pages
• Pub­lisher: William Mor­row Paperbacks
• Lan­guage: English
• ISBN-10: 0062107909

My rat­ing for The Secrets of Mary Bowser — 5

Thoughts:
The Secrets of Mary Bowser by Lois Lev­een (Web­site | Twit­ter | Face­book) is an inter­est­ing book about an inter­est­ing time. There is very lit­tle known about Mary Bowser, a free slave who went back to spy for the Union at Jef­fer­son Davis’ house dur­ing the Civil War.

Very lit­tle is known about Mary Bowser (even though her name as a spy was Ellen Bond, which didn’t make it into this book), so there are many lib­er­ties taken with the char­ac­ter. This could be good or bad and could eas­ily back­fire at the author, how­ever I think this time it worked and the author does a fine job not only with the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, but also describ­ing the daily lives of free blacks dur­ing the era.

The first half of the book takes place before the war starts, the sec­ond half, where Bowser goes to work for Varina Davis, wife of Con­fed­er­ate Pres­i­dent Jef­fer­son Davis, is fas­ci­nat­ing. The other his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ters in the book, such as Eliz­a­beth Van Lew, an ardent abo­li­tion­ist and Bowser’s for­mer owner who freed her, are also well writ­ten and interesting.

Pic­ture thought to be of Mary Bowser

Despite the era and mate­r­ial, I didn’t find the story too dark even though there are ele­ments of vio­lence. Ms. Lev­een wrote her main char­ac­ters as uplift­ing indi­vid­uals, liv­ing hard lives dur­ing hard times.

It is dif­fi­cult to write his­tor­i­cal fic­tion nov­els, as there are many peo­ple (myself included) who will nit­pick to no end, how­ever, I do under­stand that his­tor­i­cal fic­tion is a sub­genre of fic­tion, not his­tory. I would cer­tainly sug­gest read­ing the excel­lent mate­r­ial in the back of the book where Ms. Lev­een makes clear what is his­tor­i­cally accu­rate, what is fic­tional and some more background.

Update 21 June, 2012:
Lois Leveen's arti­cle in the New York Times about Mary Bowser is pub­lished: A Black Spy in the Con­fed­er­ate White House

So tell me, do you like to read the author's note before read­ing the book?

Syn­op­sis:
Based on a true story, Mary has been a slave to the Van Lew fam­ily in Rich­mond, VA. Bet Van Lew, the daugh­ter and abo­li­tion­ist, frees Mary and sends her to school in Philadelphia.

When a war seems immi­nent, Mary returns to Vir­ginia, defy­ing the law, to care for her ail­ing father. Pos­ing as a slave in the Con­fed­er­ate White House, Mary puts her pho­to­graphic mem­ory to good use.

Buy this book in paper or in elec­tronic format

Give­away

• Give­away ends: May 23, 2012

• US/Canada Ship­ping Addresses Only

• No PO Boxes

• Win­ners will have 24 hours to write back with their address, oth­er­wise an alter­nate win­ner will be picked

Con­grat­u­la­tions: enamoredsoul@

TLC Book Tour for The Secrets of Mary Bowser:

Tues­day, May 15th: Bookworm’s Din­ner
Wednes­day, May 16th: Man of La Book
Thurs­day, May 17th: A Cozy Reader’s Cor­ner
Mon­day, May 21st: Unabridged Chick Wednes­day,
May 23rd: A Chick Who Reads
Thurs­day, May 24th: Life In Review
Fri­day, May 25th: “That’s Swell!”
Mon­day, May 28th: Peek­ing Between the Pages
Tues­day, May 29th: Just Joanna
Wednes­day, May 30th: Book Jour­ney

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I got this book for free from TLC Book Tours

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