Although it doesn’t qualify as a historical novel (thankfully – since I can remember 1984 pretty well!), this excellent novel evokes the recent past. Well worth reading. Here’s my review of High Dive for Bookbrowse.com

https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/book_number/3367/high-dive

I think this link will work for a while and then after that you need to join BookBrowse to read it and all the other review and beyond the book articles on there.