I Scribble and Drink Tea

Suspenseful, in-depth history

Revisado: 07-26-24

It's not often that a historical narrative can hold me on the edge of my seat. The fact that this book did that is a huge tribute to Puhak's ability as a storyteller. She's not just a storyteller, though: she obviously has the academic chops to grapple with the sources and the tough questions, and she gives her conclusions in a way that always respects the reader's intelligence—I never felt talked down to or brushed off, as sometimes happens when academic historians write books for laypeople. Nor did I feel like Puhak was distorting history for the sake of a gripping narrative, as sometimes happens when fiction authors (or aspiring fiction authors) try their hand at history. This is an author who has real respect for the source material, and real respect for the reader.

Now, as to the suspense: it helps, of course, that the period (Merovingian France) is one that I have very little familiarity with so I had no idea how the story ended. But I've read plenty of new-to-me histories, and "suspenseful" is very rarely a word I can use to describe them. I'm reading a history of the Thirty Years' War right now, and while I'm fascinated by the intricacies of what's happening, I don't feel any suspense about the outcome (even though I don't know what it is).

What Puhak does is select two people from this period in history (Queen Brunhild and Queen Fredegund) and then make very real their fears, concerns, ambitions, and desires. Throughout the twisting and complex civil wars that follow, she always makes ensures that we know the stakes for Brunhild and Fredegund. What could be a rather confusing list of betrayals, battles, and royal marriages in another author's hands is instead rendered completely clear, and completely vivid, because we see them through Brunhild's and Fredegund's eyes, and we see how they fit into their calculations and anxieties. And because we see all these events through their eyes (again, in a historically respectful way—this isn't fiction) we feel the weight of how each event might affect them. The result is a surprisingly taught and suspenseful narrative.

Along the way, we get plenty of the smaller stories that pull the reader onto fascinating side-trips. I will be forever grateful to this book for introducing me to Radegund, the captive Princess of a destroyed kingdom who escaped to become an Abbess and political power-broker in her own right.

Excellent, excellent stuff, and quite possibly the best book I've read this year. Highly recommended.

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