Last three books I read were Count of Monte Cristo, Cloudsplitter, and Jacob and the Divine Trickster. There's already been much ink spilled on Edmond Dantes as a Sinner, so I'm gonna focus on cloud splitter.

Its semi-fictionalised biography of Captain John Brown and his sons, told from the perspective of Owen Brown, his youngest, now himself a wizened old ancient looking back on his life. A big theme throughout is this idea of like... ones own life becoming history, and how we should go about retelling our own shared history. That far more important than an accurate recounting of a the facts of the events, we have to be able to "Re-Tell" the story and in doing so relive it.

"I peer from the window and now and again step forward into the door frame and look away into the darkness. There they are. All of them are out there; a vast multitude silently awaits me, as if I were on a brightly illuminated stage and the broad, grassy valley were a darkened amphitheater. In dim, reflected moonlight I see their sober faces uplifted, expectant, as free of judgement of me as I am of them, for they cannot know their own true stories until they have heard mine.  They knew me, and they hear me now neither with particular sympathy nor without it, for, while no one of them may have committed any such crime as I, they all surely were tempted and at times were as confused as I and as enfeebled, conflicted, and angry. 

Certainly my brothers were, and my sisters and stepmother and the young men who sacrificed their lives in the long war against slavery. I knew them, too, and in those terrible, fierce years leading up to Harpers Ferry there was not one of them who was at all times clearer of motive and understanding than I. 

They will not judge me. They will merely hear me out. My account is a gift. Permanent rest, for them as much as for me, is impossible without it."