The last in my Geraldine Brooks series, this one is about a favorite topic: the plague. This book is historical fiction about the Plague Village, a place that wound up with plague in 1666 and quarantined itself to keep the plague from spreading to other villages. As with Brooks' other books, this one has a strong central female character and a lot of other interesting folks. Also like her other books, the ending that you think you’re hoping for isn’t the one she gives you and you wind up liking this one more. I enjoyed the detail-oriented look at a 17th century village complete with superstition, class fractitiousness and lots of messiness. A great read and possibly my favorite of the three even though People of the Book was more up my alley.

I love how I can be a librarian and still not know about an author who I absolutely love. This was the second of three Brooks books I’m working my way through, a historical fiction account of Mister March from Little Women and what happened to him when he went off with the soldiers. It’s a really interesting look at the South during the civil war, along with the abolitionist North’s reaction to some of it. Great story, lush with detail and the added aspect of somewhat unreliable narrators made this book--a book I wasn’t so sure I’d like at the outset--into one of the better books I’ve read this year.