Hi Everyone,
While many people class my novel Geraniums as historical fiction, I do not. Set in the 1960s and ’70s, I tag it modern-day, as those were years I lived through. History was within easy reach. Today I am writing what I think of as true historical fiction, a story set in the decade between 1819 and 1829, with a back story dating as far in the past as 1731. Clearly, this milieu is not at my fingertips.
In some ways, writing historical fiction has been just the same as creating a present-day story, and yet in other ways not at all. Aren’t emotions the same no matter the decade? Think Romeo and Juliet. Who can’t identify? Yet for me the trickier aspect is setting the story within the framework of (to me) alien events. Meshing affairs that took place on a world stage with the intimacy of my characters’ lives is at once daunting and yet supremely revealing. They did what they did because…
As my characters were real people, I feel I am walking a fine line. How can I guess the accuracy of my hunches? I can’t. I suppose that is where the art of fiction comes in. At the end, it must just be a good story and hang together, but if there were world events that impacted on their lives then I must be true to those as well. Or even if the events did not directly bump up against their lives, they did have an influence on society; they were part of the backdrop. For example, would a great comet sailing through the sky, the first steam boat plying the Mississippi, the largest earthquake in American history or a declaration of war with England make any difference to my characters’ story?
Of course, yes. Cultural and historical events are the brocade, the tapestry so to speak, of my story. Yes, my character would have thrilled at the publication of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in 1813. On the American frontier, she wrote home to England, begging for books, describing the dearth of reading material. And with the publication of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels starting in 1814, surely she would have read these to her young sons, especially Peveril of the Peak, set in part in her home county, Derbyshire, England.
The 1807 trade embargo closed all American ports to US exports and restricted imports from England (causing imports to fall from $138 million to $13 million and exports to drop from $108 million to $7 million). Plainly, this would deal a tragic blow to a young husband’s mercantile business. One of the largest volcanic eruptions in the world would have a catastrophic impact on the weather, slaying grain prices and laying waste a family mill. And England turning from America to India for cotton to force prices down (30 cents a bushel to 9 cents a bushel) would sell a whole country down-river.
As a novelist I am somewhat free to connect the dots in any way that seems probable, possible, maybe even fact, but the exercise of delving into historical fiction and trying to knit cultural and historic forces together begged me to take a look at my own life in 2024, the tapestry of world affairs—Kamala and Tim, Trump and JD, Iran, 200 missiles, Israel. Yup, hands up, I am a news hound. I scroll through 12 news channels, including BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN, and am held in thrall by angle, spin, accuracy (or not). Financial news adds its own hefty weft and warp to the daily record.
Economic news is, perhaps, the kingpin, as it was in 1819, the year of The Panic, the most important event in American history that you’ve never heard of. The first to use the “P” word, Thomas Jefferson said “at present all is confusion, uncertainty and panic.” I imagine him trying to weave the threads of his life together before he died insolvent, another victim of the times, as I sit at the loom of my life, eyes wide open, listening (to those 12 news channels 
), and pedal the shuttle, aligning the threads, incapable of knowing outcome or final design.
So while wishing you an October full of bright shiny leaves falling, I also applaud your ability like any good novelist to connect the dots in a way that suits you—whether probable, possible, or even fact—to tell the spellbinding story of your own life with its great backdrop, one that you are willing to read over and over and over again.
Love,
Marlene
Photo by Midjourney