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Title: If you write a historical novel, then get your history right.
Review: Anachronisms, one after the other. Just in the first fifteen pages: Isabella chooses not to travel by railroad to New Orleans, which is a good thing, since there weren't any in the 1820s. Rutherford refers to "Piltdown Man", who wasn't dug up until 1912. "Credit to the race" is a twentieth century phrase. And "locofoco" matches were invented four years after "Entry, the first" was supposedly written.I can't imagine what else Johnson comes up with in the remaining 200 pages, but this kind of carelessness doesn't warrant serious reading, much less a national book award!!
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