An Extraordinary Union: A Novel of the Civil War, by Alyssa Cole, is an intersectional work: historical fiction, romance, and Black History, all in one place. Bonus? It’s also written by a woman of color.

My standard for good historical fiction is that it tells the story from a perspective I haven’t heard before. This story definitely does that. Set in 1862 in Virginia, the book begins with the protagonist, a former slave who is now working as a spy, in an undercover role as a mute slave in a the home of a prominent white family, hoping to gain intel to send back to the Union.

As the plot thickets, the characters work through their feelings about the war and concerning each other. With characters on both side of the war, it’s interesting to see the different perspectives and how each person justifies their position to themselves and others. Many perspectives, Union and Confederate, white and Black, slave and free, are given attention during the storytelling, with their attitudes, ideas, and histories explored.

I appreciated the books treatment of other themes as well, including jealousy, unconscious bias, and dealing with emotions in relationship.

I enjoyed the historical fiction aspect of the book, and was gratified to find that as I suspected, a number of the characters were taken straight out of real life (read the Author’s Note at the end of the book for details).

As the romance unfolded, the physically intimate parts of the book kind of fell flat for me. Part of this, I’m sure, is because in the last romance I read, the characters were married, so it didn’t feel “wrong” for them to be together physically (removing most of the guilt factor in reading explicit sex scenes). In this book, the love interests came together very quickly (and basically skipped the foreplay) and the lack of commitment or warm-up left me a little cold. But *sigh* there was also the sense that the characters knew they belonged together and were connected from the very beginning, and I can identify with that.

In fact, as the close of Lent drew near, I set the book aside for a pre-Easter content cleanse, and wasn’t even sure if I wanted to pick it up again. I’m glad my curiosity got the better of me. The last third of the book continued its thoughtful consideration of race issues, interesting plot, and the climax was a great ride all the way to the end.

Since this was my first Black History Month pick for grown ups written by a person of color, I wanted badly for it to be an unambiguous win. It wasn’t totally that, but it was still a pretty good read, and such a nice break from the nonfiction works I’ve been reading that I’ve been having trouble going back to finish them.