Rebel Falls by Tim Wendel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
While I love historical fiction, I’m not a huge fan of Civil War books. Or any war books, to be honest. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
The fictional protagonist is Rory Chase, a friend of the historically-accurate Fanny Seward, daughter of former Secretary of State William Seward. Upset over the loss of her mother and uncle, she Mulan’s her way into the Union Army, is quickly discovered and kicked out. Then her friend’s father recruits her to be a spy in Niagara Falls, New York.
So this Niagara Falls plotline is the primary reason I read the book. My book club — who all lives within close proximity of the Falls, picked it. Also, author Tim Wendel grew up near where we all live.
Much of the book takes place in Niagara Falls with historically accurate location and name dropping. It then shifts to Sandusky, Ohio, with more historically accurate background. In fact, the amount of actual history that Wendel squeezed into the book was truly quite impressive. I found myself hitting pause numerous times to look things up on Wikipedia,
I’ve been reading Dungeon Crawler Carl books, which fly by at 88 miles per hour. So this was a major downshift. That said, it had no problem holding my attention.
In a few days, we (my book club) will be interviewing Wendel for our podcast and I’m truly looking forward to picking his brain.
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