“The Shenandoah Road” by Lynne Tagawa

Historical fiction takes considerable work. Good historical fiction is similar to writing two books simultaneously – the story being told and the period of history the is set within. The finished story has to pass muster with people familiar with the era. And it has to tell a good story.

The Shenandoah Road by Lynne Tagawa is good historical fiction.

The year is 1744. John Russell has a farm in the Virginia colony’s Shenandoah Valley. John’s wife has died during an attack by Indians (pioneers would not have used the term “native Americans), accidentally hit when another target was intended. He’s now rearing his young daughter alone, and he knows she needs a mother. But he is still grieving his deeply loved wife.

It’s the time of the Great Awakening in the colonies. Preachers like George Whitefield are crisscrossing the land, preaching repentance and revival. John has a profound Christian faith, and the sermons of the revival resonate with his heart.

With his cousin Roy, John travels to Philadelphia for supplies and, he hopes, to find a wife. The roundtrip journey will last several months, and friends and neighbors in the valley have given him a list of needed supplies.

Lynne Tagawa

Abigail Williams is the daughter of a Philadelphia merchant. She’s in her early 20s and is fascinated with herbs, plants, and what uses they can be put to. The merchant’s bookkeeper tells them about John Russell, and soon introductions are made. And now a young woman who has only known city life is getting married and setting off to live on the frontier, with all its implied dangers and opportunities. The Russells depart Philadelphia the same day they are married.

Much of the story is about the trip. But it’s also a story of faith, and how a young woman learns she is not the believing Christian she thought she was. She worries about her faith, or lack of it, and what she faces as the wife of a frontiersman. John worries about her faith as well, and whether he can overcome the loss of his first wife.

Tagawa tells fascinating story, one filled with historical detail and figures worked well into the narrative, so well, that it doesn’t seem like fiction at all. With the Russells, the reader experiences scoundrels, storms, the importance of folk medicine, the making of soap, religious conflicts, and colonial travel.

A biology teacher by career, Tagawa has also published The Heart of Courage (another historical novel), the novel A Twisted Strand, and Sam Houston’s Republic, a Texas history curriculum. She lives in south Texas.

The Shenandoah Road brings colonial history and the Great Awakening alive by telling the story of ordinary people living in tumultuous times.