Have you ever walked by a building or a famous landmark wondering what kind of secrets are hiding in its history? One of those that locals tend to avoid unless absolutely necessary? Me neither.
The “lycium tree” in Debrecen with the Great Calvinist Church behind. Photo @laczkozsu
In my hometown, Debrecen, Hungary, there’s a famous plant, the “lycium tree,” commonly called as boxthorn (lycium halimifolium), a rarte botanical shrub that has grown so large that it looks like a tree. According to the local legend about this plant from the Protestant Reformation period (1500s), a dedicated priest, Father Bálint, who converted to Protestantism, and a Catholic priest, Ambrosius, were walking away after their religious polemics, when Ambrosius broke a branch from a plant, stuck it in the ground, and said, mockingly, “Your new faith will only amount to something if this stick grows into a tree!” Father Bálint replied confidently, “Then it shall become a tree!”
Over centuries later, the plant still thrives at 11.5 feet tall, connecting the community to its religious history. With its significant connections to Protestantism, particularly the Reformed (Calvinist) tradition, Debrecen is often called the “Calvinist Rome.” Preserved by a local landmark, the legend reflects a historical transition when Debrecen was shifting from Catholicism to Protestantism, capturing the religious tensions of the time in a symbolic story about faith and perseverance.
If the lycium tree were located in New York City, best-selling author Fiona Davis would be telling this story in a much more engaging manner, like any other books she’s published. Let’s take a look why her approach of using New York City landmarks to explore historical turning points appeals to diverse readers.
Landmark-Centered Narratives
Davis typically structures her novels around iconic buildings, which, as silent witnesses to history, serve as anchors for the historical narratives. Just like the tree, these buildings persist and thrive, changing function over time while maintaining their essence, while human stories unfold around them in her novels. Each features notable cover art with a compelling visual of the landmark, inviting the reader to read more of these books.
The Dollhouse (2016): set in the Barbizon Hotel, vibrant and lively with young women from diverse backgrounds and ambitions.- The Address (2017): set in the Dakota, NYC’s most famous apartment house, where John Lennon used to live.
- The Masterpiece (2018): set in the architectural masterpiece, the Grand Central Terminal, with back stories from its prime to demise.
- The Chelsea Girls (2019): set in the Chelsea Hotel, a safe haven for budging young artists in the early 1950s during the “Red Scare” hunt for communists.
- The Lions of Fifth Avenue (2020): set in the iconic New York Public Library, with a story inviting the reader to explore the library.
- The Magnolia Palace (2022): set in the Frick Museum, one of New York City’s most impressive Gilded Age mansions.
- The Spectacular (2024): set in the Radio City Music Hall in the middle of the 20th century.
- The Gimlet Slip (2024): set in the penthouse of the Plaza Hotel and Long Island.
- The Stolen Queen (2025): set in the Met in New York City, including its famous Met Gala and the Egyptian art collection, with locations in Egypt.
Symbol as Storyteller
A symbol is a strong, visually pleasing component, easily translatable into the 21st-century, where a short attention span, cravings for instant gratification and easy explanations prevail, often in brief social media presentations. Still striving, the lycium tree is a physical symbol that tells an important story. Davis uses physical objects, including buildings, similarly to cast them as reminders of historical times and events, while pointing to the larger scheme of life we all embody. The most striking is the story of a popular artist’s model, who posed for sculptures by famous landmarks all over the city in The Magnolia Palace. In her latest book, The Stolen Queen, the Cerulean Queen and the broad collar, a type of necklace popular in ancient Egypt, play a crucial role, while the Dakota symbolizes thin lines between success and failure, love and loss in The Address.
Dual Timelines
In the Hungarian legend, the lycium tree connects the past Reformation era to the present Calvinist Rome. Similarly, Davis often employs dual timelines, connecting historical events to more contemporary periods through her settings. Juggling multiple timelines presents a captivating narrative, which engages the reader’s imagination and tests their attention to detail. For the writer, this requires incredible storytelling and research skills. The Address sets the plot in the Dakota a century apart, the granddaughter-grandmother lifetime spans eighty years in The Lions, while the two female protagonists of The Masterpiece embark on their journeys fifty years apart. The dual timeline over forty years in The Stolen Queen also presents a friendship evolving across generations and cultures.
Historical transitions
As the lycium tree story captures a pivotal religious transitional moment (Catholicism to Protestantism), Davis’s stories frequently explore moments of social or cultural transition in New York City’s history. Although reading or thinking about the past is not always in high demand, these novels stand as compelling evidence that there is plenty to learn about the present through the lens of the past, including political corruption or authority and power struggles, such as in the novella, The Gimlet Slip, set at the end of Prohibition. Transitions are also depicted in clashing everyday life scenes inThe Dollhouse between the acceptance of abuse by the aspiring young women at the modeling agency and the freedom of the downtown jazz clubs in the 1950s.
Women’s perspectives
Women’s experiences against historical backdrops dominate Davis’s stories. Power dynamics in her books explore how they shape historical outcomes from women’s perspectives, such as the gritty, headstrong Jo and Lydia, the female head of a criminal empire in The Gimlet Slip, both survivor types in their own way. It’s the women’s rights movement in The Lions of the Fifth Avenue that encourages the protagonist Laura to second-guess her traditional role as a wife and homemaker. Instead of being content, Marion in The Spectacular feels trapped in her predictable future of a suburban housewife and takes the plunge to test her talent as a performer. Young artist-illustrator Clara has to fight against sexism in The Masterpiece in the 1920s, while her counterpart, breast cancer survivor Virginia, is forced to get a job for the first time in her life after her recent divorce in order to support herself and her daughter financially in the 1970s, still in the men’s world.
Local legends, hidden or forgotten histories
Also not too vogue nowadays, local legends are worth preserving for future generations. Davis’s novels rescue potentially forgotten historical narratives and make them accessible to contemporary audiences, such as Hathorkare’s myth in The Stolen Queen or the art school at the run-down Grand Central terminal, which was boarded-up after the stock market crashed in The Masterpiece. Blending fact with fiction, incorporating elements of local lore suggests how important is for communities to preserve and interpret their own histories. The deliberate preservation of the lycium tree in Debrecen parallels themes in Davis’s books about what we choose to preserve from the past and why. Cultural preservation is a topic without borders, from New York City to save the Grand Central to Egypt to safeguard their cultural heritage.This is where the reader can find a meaningful role for themselves: reading historical fiction and spreading the word. Our culture is important not only for us but for the future generations, too.
What exactly is a “gimlet slip?”
It’s the title of Fiona Davis’s novella co-authored with Greg Wands and published in 2024, mixing the usual elements of historical fiction with a heartbreaking mother-daughter background story. The fast-paced events are set in glamorous and resilient New York City towards the end of Prohibition, where the intrepid young female protagonist with exceptional driving skills gets pulled into a dangerous bootlegging scheme.
The “gimlet slip” in the book is a high-skilled driving maneuver she pulls to save the day, a trick one needs time to master. It symbolizes a challenge, similarly to the stick that will grow into a tree. In Davis’s books characters often face seemingly impossible challenges that test their faith or determination.
Curious to find out if there’s a recipe of the “gimlet slip” as a drink (after all, the novella is set during Prohibition when no alcohol was commercially available for purchase just as bootleg), I discovered a video in which the authors reveal it: 4 parts of gin, 2 parts of geapefruit juice, and 1 part of lime juice, i.e., a slip from the original gimlet.
If you try it, please drink responsibly and never drive under the influence!
Now I have to figure if or how the “gimlet slip” is related to the “Rockford turn,” but that should be another post. Instead, stay tuned for exploring the research required to write historical fiction, from the librarian’s perspective.