The Rabid Readers Review – ‘Alternate Endings’ anthology from the Historical Writers Forum

Alternate Endings from the Historical Writers Forum

When it comes to intriguing concepts ‘what if’ is right up there with the most compelling. Alternate Endings is a collection of eight alternative history tales answering that question in in eight very different ways.
Three standouts for me were:
Michael Ross’ Remember the Ladies – postulating that the American Declaration of Independence put women on a par with men. This is beautifully written and we feel as if we are right inside the families as wife power triumphs over ingrained chauvinism.
Samantha Wilcoxon’s Tudors with a Twist – taking a sideways glance at Mary Tudor and Elizabeth. This is nicely imagined, with a harshly twisted ending that tweaks the nerves.
Salina Baker’s Act Worthy of Yourselves – looks at a lesser-known hero of the American War of Independence. What if Joseph Warren, who died at Bunker Hill, survived to become one of the founding fathers?
More generally, I would comment that the scholarship in all the stories is of high order. However, in some cases, I do feel that historical accuracy rather overpowers both the dramatis personae and the telling of the story so that what could have been rip-roaring reads are instead a little colourless.
That having been said, there is something here to interest everyone I think. Read it and argue with me!

Jane Jago

Historical Fiction Authors go Alternate

Interestingly enough most alternate history is written by writers of speculative fiction and not by those who have immersed themselves in a period for years, writing historical fiction or non-fiction about it. The extra depth of knowledge that can bring is very clear in this anthology. I think it enhances an understanding of how a change to the historical timeline by one key detail being altered, would truly impact.
From the Rome of Julius Caesar in Virginia Crow’s thought-provoking Vercingetorix’s Virgin, to 19th-Century France and the fate of Marie Antionette and her king in Marie-Thérèse Remembers by Elizabeth K. Corbett, this is a fascinating tour through history as it might have been.
The eight choices of ‘What if…?’ stories here seem a bit more unusual than many alternate history anthologies. Some are better known like the intriguing Princess of Spain by Karen Heenan, which explores what might have been if Henry VIII’s older brother Arthur had not succumbed to illness at an early age. But some are about less well-known times such as Cathie Dunn’s compellingly convincing Race Against Time set in the turmoil that followed the death of Henry I, and Sharon Bennett Connolly’s Long Live the King, which posits a dramatic possibility in which King John lives a little longer.
It is hard to have favourites. All the authors have chosen areas they clearly know intimately. The sense of era in each story is excellently realised. Even those periods I am not familiar with—like the American Revolutionary setting for Act Worthy of Yourselves by Salina Baker exploring what might have been if the highly regarded Dr Warren had not perished when he did—have beautifully grounded settings, so I found my feet in them very quickly.
But I would like to mention two stories which particularly drew me in. One was the wonderfully written Remember the Ladies in which Michael Ross imagines a United States being founded with women equally at its heart and enfranchised alongside their men and how that might have come about. It is stirring and moving and makes one wish perhaps it could have been. The other is Samantha Wilcoxon’s Tudors with a Twist which offers radically different views of the reigns of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I. As the title suggests, there is a very well-wrought and superbly ironic twist in this tumultuous Tudor tale.
If you enjoy alternate history or are curious to see what happens when historical fiction authors get to give full rein to indulge their wishlist of how history might have been, this is a volume of short stories that you might want to check out.

E.M. Swift-Hook