Growing up, we spent an infinite amount of time reading history textbooks in our fourth period World History classes in an effort to better understand the world around us. Our teachers drilled into our heads why an event mattered, what the significance of said event was, and how it happened. Ironically, I’ve spent the last three years in my degree analyzing such events. Now, I’m not going to lie — I absolutely love history. Specifically, I find the time period during World War II to be one of the most fascinating in terms of understanding just how human nature can deviate. But you see, in the last three years, I’ve sought to know more about how people my age would have felt during these times. I don’t mean this to sound like it‘s glorifying the time period, because that is the last thing I’m attempting to sit here and do. I simply believe that historical fiction is a great way for young adults to better understand that while history might quite literally be in the past, it will never truly leave us.
So whether you’re looking for a new genre or seeking to understand how an event may have impacted someone your age, here are seven historical fiction books that (despite being extremely sad in nature) will show you that no matter who you are or where you come from, in all of history — even its not so pretty moments — there are still times when the best of our humanity shines through.
Warning: minor spoilers ahead!
- All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
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This 2015 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction is set in occupied France during the Second World War. Doerr takes the reader through the war following Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind French girl who lives in Paris with her father, a locksmith, at the start of the war, and Werner Pfennig, an orphaned German boy with a knack for fixing radios. The story follows the pair as they grow up a world apart, until their individual stories finally come to a head. They must learn that the key to understanding one another quite literally lays in their differences.
- Ashes in the Snow / Between Shades of Grey – Ruta Sepetys
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Despite having two different names, both of these books house the same story. Sepetys takes the reader through Stalin’s occupation of Eastern Europe through the eyes of a Lithuanian sixteen-year-old artist, Lina, who fights to put her family back together through her art after being separated. Despite the brutality she and the people around her face, her art provides hope that their journey and struggles will never be forgotten.
- Salt to the Sea – Ruta Sepetys
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In this novel, Sepetys shows the Second World War through the minds of four very different, yet similar, strangers, all who share a common goal of making it aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff. Joana Vilkas, a Lithuanian nurse and cousin to Lina from Ashes in the Snow; Florian Beck, a Prussian art restoration apprentice; Emilia Stożek, a young Polish girl carrying a very big secret; and Alfred Frick, a German Nazi soldier in love with a Jewish girl, all find themselves searching for a way onto a ship that they hope will be their ticket to a better life.
- The Atomic City Girls – Janet Beard
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Janet Beard tells the tale of a town that exists for one sole purpose — to build the bomb to be used on Hiroshima — and the girls who have no idea they’re building it. This story follows the life of eighteen-year-old June Walker, who isn’t told what she is building, and has been given a strict order to ask no questions.
- The Book Thief – Markus Zusak
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The Book Thief tells the story of Liesel Meminger as she grows up in Nazi Germany. Orphaned, she is sent to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann, a German couple who violently oppose the war. During her life in a small town outside of Munich, Liesel befriends the mayor’s wife, Ilsa Hermann, who invites her to use their library after discovering her stealing a book during a book fire. Liesel’s love for words drives her to write her own account of the world she lives in.
- We Were the Lucky Ones – Georgia Hunter
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If there’s one thing for sure, it‘s that the Kurc family’s story is nothing short of a miracle. Separated during the war, each family member must find their own rhythm to survive, despite not knowing what has become of the rest of them. At the end of the war, when it seems all hope is lost, the family proves that love is stronger than any war.
- Everyone Brave Is Forgiven – Chris Cleave
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Mary, a young socialite in a blueblood family, is determined to do her part in the war effort and finds her niche in teaching the children who were turned away from the war due to things out of their control. Tom, an education administrator, is devasted to learn that his best friend, Alastair, enlisted in the war. And Alastair, an art restorer without a violent bone in his body, has to come to terms with the life in which he now finds himself. Their stories cross to show readers that courage and love will always go further than hate.
Historical fiction, despite being quite sad in nature, does a tremendous job in highlighting the best of human nature even during the world’s darkest hours. It allows its readers to see the world during that time through the eyes of someone living in it. If there’s one thing historical fiction teaches us, it‘s that love will always win out over hate.