March Historical Fiction You Should Know About

Told in a dual timeline narrative, a young couple faces the beginning of Argentina’s Dirty War in the 1970s, while, twenty years later, their daughter searches for answers about her parents’ past. But her search into a time when many people in Argentina were being disappeared by the state, may put both her parents–and her–in danger.

Release date: March 1, 2022

In the 1940s, Bright Leaf, North Carolina was the tobacco capital of the South. When Maddie Sykes arrives there to join her aunt’s thriving sewing empire as a seamstress, she has no idea that she will soon be thrust into a terrible conspiracy being hidden by the tobacco industry, which could ruin the lives of the women in Bright Leaf who she’s grown to admire and trust.

Release date: March 1, 2022

An Algonquin of the Weskarini Deer Clan marries a white Frenchman in the 1600s at the behest of her chief, hoping to cement a much-needed alliance with the French against the British and Iroquois. Marie does what she feels she must for her people, but her new husband’s Catholicism blinds him to her own culture and beliefs. And when it becomes clear that their daughter is two-spirited–a blessing according to Algonquin culture–his unmoving prejudice endangers everything their marriage was meant to build and everything Marie holds dear.

Release date: March 8, 2022

On the eve of the Japanese invasion of China in 1938, a woman and her young son flee to the countryside in search of safety. Many years later, after settling in America, that young boy has grown into a man, and his daughter is desperate to understand her family and heritage, though her father refuses to speak about any of it. How can they move forward with the weight of the past dragging them down? It’s a generational story of survival and the power of the past as well as what it means to be home.

Release date: March 15, 2022

An epic charting one woman’s journey from West Africa in the mid-eighteenth century and across the Atlantic, surviving enslavement and learning the skills of midwifery, even living through the Civil War. The book was inspired by a 112-year-old woman in the 1870 U.S. Federal census report for Ohio as well as the author’s own female ancestors.

Release date: March 15, 2022

Shining a light on 1960s Australia and the devastating government policy of removing Indigenous children from their home, Tony Birch’s The White Girl follows a grandmother and granddaughter just trying to get by. When a new policeman arrives in their small, country town, determined to enforce the letter of the law, Odette realizes she’ll have to risk everything to protect her granddaughter and the people she loves.

Release date: March 15, 2022

In this debut novel, Ponnambalam tells the story of Teha’amana, the thirteen year old girl sold to artist Paul Gauguin during his time in Tahiti. Teha’amana appears in Gauguins work, like in the painting, “”The Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch,” as well as his journal. I Am No Your Eve is her story.

Release date: March 24, 2022

The author of The Rose Code and The Alice Network is back with another incredible story of courage during wartime. The life of a librarian and mother in Kiev finds her life forever altered with the start of WWII and Hitler’s invasion of Russia. Handed a rifle and sent to fight, Mila Pavlichenko becomes known as Lady Death, feared by Nazis and beloved by her people. But her wounds from the war are more than skin deep, and it’s not until a goodwill tour to America and an unlikely friendship with the First Lady, that she begins to find herself again.

Release date: March 29, 2022

Everyone knows the story of Princess Diana. But in this novel set behind-the-scenes at Buckingham Palace, we get not just Diana’s story, but that of another beloved princess: Charlotte. Chaffing against the rules and expectations of royal life, the new Princess of Wales discovers the diary of Princess Charlotte, written in the 1800s, and the many parallels of their lies that lie within.

Release date: March 31, 2022