Hell and Highwater

"The protagonist Caleb’s father is arrested and then his body is mysteriously washed up on a beach. So, Caleb is alone now and goes to live with an aunt he barely knows and so begins the adventure to solve the mystery of his father’s death. Caleb and his father had run a puppet show. Caleb was good with a needle and thread from mending all the puppets – he is really good at sewing. Tanya Landman uses details like this to reverse gender stereotypes. He takes in sewing work and so this skill is a vital skill for bringing in money for the family. Oh it’s superb. It is utterly convincing historically and it also feels relevant and modern. It makes you look at the world around you. Tanya creates real drama in her storytelling and at the same time she highlights the inequalities of the time – inequalities that are still relevant today. Particularly the idea that there is one rule for the rich and another for the poor. Yes. And, as with the way Tanya highlights inequalities between the rich and poor, she handles race and the cruelty of racial prejudice with great clarity. She doesn’t shy away from these big and important questions – she faces them head on. This is one of the reasons I was drawn to this book and to Secrets and Sapphires . Although fiction, these are also reflections of history as it really was – so these books give a truer picture of what life really was like then. I feel that honest retellings of our history like these are important as well as being great reads. And this leads me on to my next choice."