Entertaining and Educational

On Mar. 16, 2018 on Amazon |4.0 out of 5 stars

By Charles David Hanna

Format: Kindle Edition| Verified Purchase

Wayne Clark has crafted a historical fiction novel with his book That Woman: Beating the Odds, a story about a young woman kidnapped and brought from France to the New World.

If you’re a fan of novel writer James A. Michener, you’ll be sure to enjoy this book, with its incredible attentiveness to historical details. In that vein, the novel is educational as well as entertaining, for it allows us glimpses into 18th century Europe and colonial America, not to mention the harrowing sea journey between the two.

I also appreciate that Clark chose to make his protagonist Jewish, which ads an interesting element to this story of interfacing with life in the New World. I would question the use of Yiddish between the protagonist and her brother, since Jews from Portugal might have been more likely to use Ladino as their lingua franca.

In any case, the novel was engaging, the characters complex, the backstories compelling, and the historical elements detailed and interesting.

A great read, especially for those with an interest in colonial history.