I was just looking at the August Goodreads newsletter and saw a write-up of an (early twentieth-century) historical novel that sounds as if it at least theoretically qualifies for the Diverse Books for Adults category. It's called "Orphan Number Eight." I believe the author's name is Kim Alkavine, or something like that. It's about a girl named Rachel in around 1914 who gets sent to a Jewish orphanage in New York City at age four when her mother is killed, then winds up being selected as a subject in a rather inhumanely administered experiment--ironically overseen by a female doctor--aimed at preventing tonsillectomies by proactively subjecting children's tonsils to repeated doses of X-rays. Unfortunately, this treatment has multiple side effects, including alopecia and, probably, the breast cancer symptoms Rachel eventually develops as an adult.
Fast forward to the 1950's, where adult Rachel is a nurse whose newest patient turns out to be none other than the elderly Mildred Solomon, the same doctor who so unfeelingly subjected her to a lab animal-like existence when she was a small child several decades earlier. When Rachel confronts the doctor about the unnecessary suffering she'd caused her young experimental subjects, the woman is unrepentant. This intensifies Rachel's indecision over whether to treat the new patient in her usual professional manner or succumb to the urge to pay the doctor back for what she did to Rachel and the other children years before.
Somewhat less central to the main crisis of the plot is the fact that Rachel is a lesbian. Preliminary reviewers were divided on how effectively this was handled, although the one who was most critical of this story element appeared to be somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of a lesbian protagonist to begin with. Another reviewer approvingly noted that another lesbian couple is also featured in the novel, in the form of an earlier teenage patient of Rachel's whose mother forbids her girlfriend to contact her after the girl is hospitalized (unfortunately with inauspicious results). I haven't had a chance to look at the book yet myself, but on paper it sounds as if it might meet some of your desired criteria for diverse historical novels, although it's set in a more recent period than you might ideally prefer.
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Date: 2015-08-07 08:00 am (UTC)Fast forward to the 1950's, where adult Rachel is a nurse whose newest patient turns out to be none other than the elderly Mildred Solomon, the same doctor who so unfeelingly subjected her to a lab animal-like existence when she was a small child several decades earlier. When Rachel confronts the doctor about the unnecessary suffering she'd caused her young experimental subjects, the woman is unrepentant. This intensifies Rachel's indecision over whether to treat the new patient in her usual professional manner or succumb to the urge to pay the doctor back for what she did to Rachel and the other children years before.
Somewhat less central to the main crisis of the plot is the fact that Rachel is a lesbian. Preliminary reviewers were divided on how effectively this was handled, although the one who was most critical of this story element appeared to be somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of a lesbian protagonist to begin with. Another reviewer approvingly noted that another lesbian couple is also featured in the novel, in the form of an earlier teenage patient of Rachel's whose mother forbids her girlfriend to contact her after the girl is hospitalized (unfortunately with inauspicious results). I haven't had a chance to look at the book yet myself, but on paper it sounds as if it might meet some of your desired criteria for diverse historical novels, although it's set in a more recent period than you might ideally prefer.