Author: Patricia Furstenberg

Patricia Furstenberg writes with passion about history that blends with fiction, about war heroes, human or canine, while her poems and children's books are uplifting and humorous. Welcome to her blog, Travel, History, Fiction ~ Romania & South Africa ~ 'For what is wind, but the amassed power of words long ago uttered?'
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What Did Medieval Epistles Really Look Like? And Kate’s Surprise Letter

brown envelope with red wax seal

There is something haunting about an old letter.

While writing Kate’s Letter for the anthology Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope (OUT JUNE 17), I found myself drawn not only to the emotions within the letter, but to the physical reality of medieval correspondence itself. How did people protect private messages before envelopes existed? What did secrecy look like in an age of spies, kingdoms, and fragile loyalties?

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Simmering Stories: Robbie Cheadle Reviews When Secrets Bloom and I Share a Historical Recipe

When Secrets Bloom, historical fiction set in 143 Transylvania, an old book near a pot of sarmale

Some conversations are like a shared meal: nourishing, layered with memory and meaning. When Robbie Cheadle speaks about the books she reads she does so, with generosity. With Robbie, reading and cooking meet at the same table.

In her thoughtful feature of When Secrets Bloom on Latinos USA simple pleasures take centre stage: the turning of a page, the slow preparation of food, the way both acts bind us to history and to one another.

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Empire’s Passing by Marian L. Thorpe: How to Live the Passing of an Era

There are endings that close a story and there are endings that open something far larger, echoing like footsteps across a void road. When an empire falls what truly ends… and what quietly survives?

Within our historical fiction anthology Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope Marian L. Thorpe shares a remarkable story.

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Fearless AfrikaBurn and Defying Vama Veche, Love from the Black Sea to the Karoo

sunrise at the Black Sea Vama Veche, in the Karoo desert Afrikaburn

There are places that tourists visit, photograph, and then forget. And then there are those places that get lodged in your heart for years. Like the sound and the sight of the sea just before dawn or the smell of smoke caught in a jacket long after the fire has died.

Vama Veche on the coast of the Black Sea, Romania, and AfrikaBurn in the Tankwa Karoo, South Africa, are such spaces.

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Broadside and Boarding: Small Scale Action in the Age of Fighting Sail by Antoine Vanner

History does not always unfold in grand theatres. More often, it is decided in narrow waters, in the press of cannon smoke, in the brutal exchanges where survival is measured not in glory, but in seconds. When history is reduced to a single moment of fire and impact, what remains of the men who stood within it?

Antoine Vanner is one of the contributing writer to our historical fiction anthology Courage: Tales of History, Mystery and Hope.

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