In past Octobers, I’ve written about haunting books—which I define as stories that linger after I have finished the story. These aren’t usually frightening books (I don’t read many of those), but their characters and stories keep returning to my mind.
Three historical novels I’ve read recently have haunted me in that way: The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon, The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable, and The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali. The first two novels reimagine the lives of real women, while the third centers on fictional protagonists. All three books portray women fighting for independence in societies that offered them few opportunities. The settings and timeframs of the three books differ, but the struggle is similar—throughout most of history and in most societies, women have had to push against restrictions on their freedom and ambitions.
In The Pirate Queen, Ariel Lawhon recounts the life of Grace O’Malley, a sixteenth-century Irish chieftain and seafarer who refused to bow to the limits imposed on women. A born sea captain, Grace nevertheless had her future bargained away when her father arranged her marriage to a neighboring clan chieftain for political advantage. Nevertheless, she later commanded ships, became the de facto leader of two clans, and forged alliances first with Spain and then with England. In a world ruled by powerful men, she fought for power for herself. Like her contemporary Queen Elizabeth I, she would not be contained by a conventional woman’s role.
The battles on land and sea were thrilling, but Grace’s deeper battle stayed with me—her relentless struggle to become the person she was meant to be. Irish law placed all the power first in her father’s hands and then in her husband’s. Throughout her life, she had to fight for the authority a man would have been given automatically. Her courage was not confined to the deck of a ship—it was required in nearly every choice she made.
Harriet Constable’s The Instrumentalist tells the story of Anna Maria della Pietà, a gifted eighteenth-century Venetian violinist who studied under Vivaldi. Abandoned as an infant and raised in an institution for orphaned girls, Anna Maria developed an extraordinary musical talent. But the institution that cultivated her gift also confined her. She encountered fierce rivalry among the girls and struggled to receive recognition for the music she composed after her teacher claimed it as his own.
Anna Maria’s story exposed the painful distance between achievement and acknowledgment in an age when women were not seen as composers or maestros. Anna Maria could pursue greatness only by restricting her life in other ways. As I read, I wondered how much of herself she had to give away to become the musician she longed to be—and how much of the compositions we credit to Vivaldi might really be hers.
In The Lion Women of Tehran, Marjan Kamali follows two fictional Iranian girls, Ellie and Homa, from their first meeting as seven-year-old classmates in the 1950s through decades of personal and political upheaval. They came from different economic worlds and grew into women with sharply different temperaments and dreams. Yet their friendship bound them, even as circumstances, choices, and betrayals pulled their lives apart. Homa was brave and outspoken, determined to improve the lives of Iranian women. Ellie, by contrast, longed for a traditional marriage and family. As each girl pursued her dream, Iran’s political upheaval unfolded from the 1950s through 2022 when the novel ended.
The experiences of these two ordinary women brought the history I knew only in general terms to life. At its heart, the novel was a story of friendship—of childhood closeness, estrangement, secrets, regret, and love that persisted despite terrible hurt. It made me think of my own friendships, and of how much of our happiness rests on the good fortune of not having lived through revolution and war.
These novels differ in setting, scale, and circumstance, but each portrays women straining against the boundaries of their time. That is one reason I love historical fiction—it immerses us in lives far removed from our own, but depicts characters with emotions and struggles very much like our own. Famous or forgotten, commanding fleets or simply trying to protect a friendship, we are all shaped by the worlds into which we are born. We make choices, pursue ambitions, and build lives within limits we did not choose.
Perhaps that is why these books haunt me. They do more than show what happened to someone else. They ask us to imagine ourselves in these women’s places—and to wonder how we might have reacted in those circumstances.
What books have stayed with you long after you turned the final page?
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