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Books My Mother Loved…

My mother loved historical fiction.  In the days when Erma Bombeck was the queen of domestic humor, and would be feminists felt caught between Betty Friedan (too serious) and Erica Jong (too randy) historical novels were a thinking woman’s guilty pleasure.  More serious than Barbara Cartland’s frothy stories, less licentious than the bodice and pants-bursting tales of the “Sweet Savage” series  and miles beyond the Harlequin romances, historical novels combined enough research and literary craft to create entertaining stories that someone wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen reading. About half of the stories were based on historic figures; the other stories were based around historic places and events.   The heroines weren’t always beautiful (at least they didn’t think they were) and while most of the stories still focused on a woman’s quest to achieve a happy home, husband and family, the traditional ending wasn’t guaranteed.  Mama had a ton of these books and I ran through them all while I was a kid.   At the time I thought they were terribly boring; I was in love with “the classics”.  The world must have have agreed with my teenaged self , because I don’t see many historical novels these…