A Better Plan

 

I like to watch game shows, and recently I was watching one called “Tattletales” where celebrity husbands and wives try to guess how the other will answer a question. I often play along, and this time the question was something like, “What was the biggest scam you ever fell victim to?”

My response related to purchasing property soon after Roland and I married. Actually, I’m not sure it was technically a scam, because I don’t believe that the contractor meant to steal from us. But the bottom line was that we lost our $7,600 down payment, which was a lot of money for us back then.

Our plan was for me to quit my job when we had children and practice law from an office in my home with a separate entrance. That part of the plan worked out, but another part didn’t. Since such homes were rare, we found a blueprint for a house with an in-law-suite and put a down-payment on a lot in a new subdivision, contacted one of the contractors who was building in a new subdivision, and found a lot we liked. Then we entered into a contract for sale with the builder.

As a lawyer, I suppose I should have checked it out better, but what it came down to was that the contractor didn’t own that lot. Apparently it wasn’t unusual to swap lots with other contractors, and he probably expected to do that. Unfortunately, he went bankrupt instead. So we had no lot and no money. We might have been able to purchase the lot from the contractor who did own it, but we would have been out the downpayment in any event, so we decided to look at existing homes instead.

We found one in an established neighborhood closer to stores, good schools, and our church. Even with the loss and the necessary renovations, it cost less money than building would have. The house we purchased had a one-car garage and a two-car garage, both attached, and it was easy to turn the one-car garage into an office. If you look carefully at the photo, you can see the entrance between the two-car-garage and the main house. We raised our children and spent many good years there, moving out only when our parents started using walkers and we realized that the steps would be too much for us at some point.

I don’t know why God let us lose money on the lot before we found the right property. Maybe that one wasn’t on the market yet and we were trying to get ahead of God’s timing. But whatever the reason, we ended up in a better place, figuratively and literally.

But one thing I do know.

When things go wrong, God has a better plan.

Hope for the Future

 

Last week I attended a scholarship luncheon at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. The purpose of the event was to give scholarship sponsors the opportunity to meet the recipients. During the luncheon, the college president spoke about the school as a source of hope for the world. The school symbol is an anchor, which is seen in the above photo in front of Graves Hall. I had always heard that the founder’s quote referred to Hope College being “the anchor of hope for the future,” but “the anchor of hope for the world” works, too.

My father believed in education, and I grew up assuming that I would go to college. Looking back, I know that my parents would have been disappointed if I didn’t go but would have supported whatever choice I made. At the time, however, doing anything else just never crossed my mind.

I believe in education, too, although my definition is broader than just college. Not everyone is cut out for college, and we need plumbers more than we need lawyers. Daddy’s definition may have been similar, and it definitely including broadening your horizons through travel.

That said, he believed in a college education for everyone who wanted and was capable of it. He showed his dedication to that principle by working his way through Hope College  and Westminster Theological Seminary in the 1940s.

From 1948 though the 1950s, Daddy sponsored three Arab students from the Middle East, making arrangements and providing some financial support for them to come to this country to go to college. One of them returned to Jordan and spent his career working for its government. The other two stayed in the U.S., and one, Michael Suleiman, became a professor in the political science department at Kansas State University.

When my father died, Michael suggested starting a scholarship fund at Hope College in Daddy’s name. We did so, with initial contributions from Michael, my older brother Donald (Hope Class of 1970), and myself (Hope Class of 1972). I’m the only one of the three still alive and am the official contact for the Oliver S. Page Memorial Scholarship Fund, although I hope my daughter Caroline (Hope Class of 2005) will take over that role when I’m no longer able to fill it.

Scholarships are one way to support education. We can’t all afford the financial contributions to provide one, but we can all support college students in other ways, even if it is as simple as encouraging their dreams.

Because education is the anchor of hope for the future

Little Things Matter

 

I recently read a historical novel by a writer I’ve always enjoyed, but I was only a few pages in before I discovered an error. The story takes place during World War II, and one of the characters was remembering the books she read as a child. “Her friends had been Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland, her adventures in Narnia and the Secret Garden.” The problem? C.S. Lewis didn’t publish his first Narnia book (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe) until 1950, a decade after the historical novel took place.

When I first read the sentence, I was pretty sure it was wrong, but I didn’t check it out right away. Then I watched Jeopardy on April 1 and saw this Final Jeopardy answer. (If there is anybody out there who doesn’t know how Jeopardy works, the questions are really the answers, and vice versa.) In other words, this was the information the contestants were given to respond to:

A girl in a 1950 novel walks into this & “got in among the coats and rubbed her face against them.”

I knew the question (what the contestants have to guess) right away. The question was “What is a wardrobe?” and the girl was Lucy from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The category was “Novel Title Objects,” so it should have been easy for anyone who has read the Narnia books, but only one of the contestants got it right. The point here, though, is it confirmed my belief that the first Narnia book wasn’t published until after World War II (and I have since verified it from other sources).

I’m not going to call out the writer of the historical novel, however, because unfortunately it is easy to make an error about those very minor details in a historical novel. In one of my early middle-grade stories, I had a character using a ball-point pen before they were invented. I don’t remember what brought it to my attention, but I caught it in time. Since then I have tried to meticulously research even the most minor details. Even so, I can’t guarantee that no errors have slipped in.

Fortunately, fictional details don’t have to be perfect.

But I try.

From Criminal to Conqueror

 

This post is reprinted from April 2, 2018 and April 9, 2012.

__________

On Easter morning 1958, I attended the Easter service at the Garden Tomb. That’s when my father took this picture.

The service was in Arabic, so I didn’t understand any of it. Also, the tomb’s authenticity is questionable. Still, it was a great setting to celebrate a man who died as a criminal and rose as a conqueror.

To use Paul’s words from I Corinthians 15:54-57:

“Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In his rising, Jesus conquered death and sin.

That’s something I could never have done. I’m responsible for the sin, but not for the victory.

A victory he obtained for me and for you at great cost to himself.

And I’m grateful.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Alleluia!

From Celebrity to Criminal

 

This post is reprinted from March 19, 2018 and April 2, 2012. The references to celebrities with criminal records are dated, but the point is timeless.

__________

No, this post isn’t about Lindsay Lohan or Mike Tyson or Paris Hilton. A hundred years from now, they will have faded from the public memory.

That’s something they don’t share with the man who rode into town to cheering crowds on a Sunday, only to be mocked and executed as a criminal before the week was up. Events we are still talking about 2000 years later.

Talking about and celebrating. My father took this picture while my family was attending the Palm Sunday festivities in Jerusalem in 1958.

Lindsay and Mike and Paris didn’t lose their celebrity status when they were convicted of their crimes, and neither did Jesus of Nazareth.

But here is the crucial difference: Jesus was sinless. He had no guilt to convict him.

Well, that isn’t quite true.

He was guilty of love. A love so great that he paid the penalty for the sins of all humankind.

His heart was heavy and he died in anguish. But he did it by choice.

For me. For you.

And that’s something to remember not just during Holy Week but every day of the year.

Travel Schedule Woes

 

Roland and I are planners. We plan our travels years in advance, so when something falls through, it leaves us scrambling for alternatives. This was a particular problem during COVID, when we had to reschedule trips to South Africa and to Australia/New Zealand, but we got through the travel withdrawal somehow without losing the addiction. Then in 2022 we had to postpone the Ireland half of a trip to Iceland and Ireland after Roland tested positive for COVID. We made that up with a trip to Ireland last year.

Now we have to change our plans again. Roland put a lot of time and effort into arranging a trip to Eastern Europe this summer. He found two tours from our preferred providers that we could take back-to-back, with a seven-hour train ride between the end of the first to the beginning of the second. One was a land tour of Croatia and Slovenia with EF Go Ahead Tours, and the other is a river cruise from Bucharest to Budapest on Viking, which is is the other leg of the first trip we took with Viking in 2015..

Then EF emailed to say that their tour was cancelled because not enough people had signed up. They offered some alternatives, but none of them worked with the Viking cruise, which we will take as scheduled. The three trips we have done with EF Go Ahead have all been good experiences, so although it didn’t work for this summer, we had no hesitation about booking with them again. Since we had already been talking about doing a land tour of Portugal, Spain, and Morocco, we used the credits from the cancelled tour to book that one for the end of next year.

When we find a provider we like, we stick with them. This summer will be our fifth cruise with Viking, and we are going to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand with them next year.

Now the question is: Where do we go after Spain?

__________

The photo at the head of this post shows the boat we were on during our first cruise with Viking in 2015. It was docked in Budapest at the time.

Wedding Feast or Famine

 

In Roland and my families, weddings seem to be feast or famine. Our daughter, Caroline, got married on July 1, 2006. One of Roland’s sisters was married the year before, but it had been over a decade since any other weddings.

After Caroline and Pete’s wedding, we had another long dry spell until one of Roland’s nephews got married in 2022. Last year was quiet, but it looks like there will be two weddings in 2024.

We had a strong hint at Christmas, when John brought a girl home for the first time, bringing her all the way from North Carolina. Although it is hard to get to know anyone in just a couple of days, we loved Christina at once. She is a strong Christian and a lovely person inside and out. John chose well.

My niece Rachel also brought her boyfriend over for a gathering of extended family just after Christmas, and we liked him, too.

On February 25 (a Sunday), we received a call from Rachel telling us she had gotten engaged the day before and was getting married at the end of August. Then, two hours later, John called to say that he had gotten engaged the day before, as well. That’s his and Christina’s engagement picture at the head of this post. No date yet because they’re still working on their plans, but I expect it to happen sometime this year.

John is 37, and some mothers might have tried to push their children into marriage by that age, but that was never my goal. Marriage is sacred, and without the right partner people are better off single.

I’m glad John waited for Christina.

Learning to Surrender

 

When the Union armies surround Vicksburg, 12-year-old Charlotte and her family find themselves living in a cave. As she discovers what it is like to lose control of her life, will her attitude toward slavery change?

Learning to Surrender is finally here. The following link takes you to the amazon.com page for the paperback, but the Kindle version can also be reached there. The book should be available online from Barnes and Noble in the near future.

LEARNING TO SURRENDER at Amazon

The title comes from a real event. When the Yankees ordered Vicksburg to surrender in May 1862, this was Colonel Autry’s reply:

Mississippians don’t know, and refuse to learn, how to surrender to an enemy. If Commodore Farragut or Brigadier General Butler can teach them then let them come and try.

It took a year, and it was General Grant who taught them, but the residents of Vicksburg did learn to surrender.

Learning to Surrender is not about battles or the fighting itself. There are plenty of other stories told from a soldier’s point of view.

Buy and read my book to discover what it was like for the residents of Vicksburg, Mississippi as they learned to surrender.

Diaries, Diaries Everywhere, and Not a Drop of Ink

 

With the release date for Learning to Surrender just around the corner, I am reprinting a March 5, 2018 post that explains why I chose not to use the popular diary format for this novel.

Diaries, Diaries Everywhere, and Not a Drop of Ink

I apologize for the cutesy title, which isn’t even quite true. But it almost is.

Many Southern women kept diaries during the Civil War, and they ran into shortages of paper and ink. They improvised by writing on scrap paper and filling their quill pens with berry juice.

So when I decided to write a story about the Siege of Vicksburg, I considered using the diary format that has been successful for many middle-grade historical novels. Scholastic’s Dear America series, with books written by various authors, is the best-known. Then there is the American Diaries series written by Kathleen Duey, who is one of my favorite writers of middle-grade historical fiction. The first books in both series were published in 1996, so it is unlikely that one copied the other. (The time between conception and publication can take several years.) The two series ran in tandem until the early 2000s and faded almost in tandem, as well. Scholastic also issued a series for boys (My Name is America) and another for younger children (My America) published around the same time. The Dear America series later saw a resurgence with both new offerings and re-releases of some of the original books.

But that’s part of the problem. Fashions come and go, and that is as true for writing styles and formats as it is for clothing. Not that all trends are fads, and a well-written diary story will never go out of style. But I prefer to write what works for me rather than chasing a trend.

The main reason I rejected the idea of writing my book in a diary format is simple: it limits my options for dramatizing the story. First, although some real-life diaries contain vivid descriptions, the writers rarely describe those places and events that are part of their everyday lives. Even the backstory is simply assumed. Second, real-life diaries rarely set up a scene or contain dialogue. To put it in literary terms, diaries tell rather than show.

Obviously, that isn’t always the case, and some authors have found ways around the limitations. Of the many Dear America books that I have read, a couple have made significant use of dialogue, but it only works with the right protagonist—one with a good memory or a strong dramatic sense. Or there is the way Kathleen Duey does it, where diary entries are fleshed out and accompanied by much longer sections written in a more traditional third-person style.

Still, not every Southern woman or girl wrote a diary, and I would rather have my protagonist spend her time reading. That gives me more freedom to write the story I want.

And I don’t have to worry that she’ll run out of ink.

__________

The photo at the head of this post shows three of the Civil War diaries in my collection. From left to right, they are My Cave Life in Vicksburg (Mary Ann Webster Loughborough), The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman (Sarah Morgan), and Vicksburg, A City Under Siege (Emma Balfour). Emma Balfour’s entries end on June 2, 1863, a month before the siege ended. Her subsequent entries are probably just lost. But who knows—maybe she ran out of ink.

Creating Sympathy for Characters with Unsympathetic Beliefs

 

My fourth middle-grade historical novel, Learning to Surrender, will be released at the beginning of March, and my next blog posts till the soil for its publication or, to be more direct, they market it. Even so, the rest of my February posts are not pure promotion but are designed to provide insight into the writing process.

During a trip down the Mississippi River to research a different book, I came across information on the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg, where the residents dug and lived in caves that served as bomb shelters. The idea intrigued me, but it had one big negative.

There were few, if any, abolitionists in Vicksburg at the time. Early in the writing process, I came up with several ideas of how I might make my character and her family secret opponents to slavery, but Roland wasn’t sure that even closet abolitionists existed in the deep South then. Besides, that choice didn’t feel right. Historical realism dictates that my main character believe in slavery, so how could I make her sympathetic in spite of her unsympathetic beliefs?

This isn’t an unusual situation for a writer to be in. Many stories begin with an unsympathetic protagonist whose change in character or beliefs is at the crux of the story. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, who starts out as a people-hating miser and ends up as an open-hearted and generous person. Or Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden, who is one of the most spoiled, selfish heroines in children’s literature until she starts having compassion for someone else.

Readers don’t usually identify with unsympathetic characters, and they don’t like to read about people they don’t identify with. Unless we catch their interest at the beginning of the book, they won’t read on. That means that one of our tasks as writers is to generate sympathy for unsympathetic characters or for otherwise likeable characters with unsympathetic beliefs. Charles Dickens did it with humor. Frances Hodgson Burnett did it by showing the circumstances that formed Mary’s obnoxious character.

Generating sympathy for a main character with unsympathetic beliefs is just part of the job.

But you’ll have to read Learning to Surrender to find out how I did it.

__________

The drawing at the head of this post comes from Harper’s Encyclopedia of United States History (vol. 10), John Lossing Benson, ed. (New York, NY, Harper and Brothers, 1912). It is in the public domain because of its age.

Preaching to the Choir

 

It’s been unseasonably warm here lately, which makes it all the more poignant to remember the very cold days we had in January. On Sunday, January 14, it was seven degrees below zero, and the choir was scheduled to sing at the 8:00 a.m. service. Some churches cancelled services, but ours didn’t. That was consistent with my father’s philosophy, who never cancelled church because of the weather. He always said that if there was even one person in the congregation, he would hold the service. (I’m not sure he ever had that few people, though.)

Back to the present. When the choir members arrived for our pre-service warm-up on January 14, we were all there except for three members who had other commitments and would have missed anyway. Our director, Karen Foote, has often complimented the choir on its dedication, so when her mother said we wouldn’t show up with those temperatures, Karen said she was wrong. To prove it, Karen took the above photo and texted it to her mother.¹

It wasn’t just a matter of preaching to the choir, however. The 8:00 a.m. service is typically the one with the lowest attendance, but even in the cold temperatures of January 14 the congregation outnumbered us. And that’s with the option of attending the 9:30 service online.

Daddy believed that the weather shouldn’t make any difference in how we worship.

I’m glad my church agrees with him.

__________

¹Karen is not in the photo. The person who isn’t wearing a robe is our accompanist.

The Source of Peace

 

I won’t go into the details, but I had a tough several days with eyesight issues that could have affected my lifestyle. I’ve since learned that there is no permanent damage, but even before I knew that, God had given me peace.

Thursday’s devotion was especially helpful because one of the readings was Psalm 31. These selected verses from the ESV speak to my eyesight issues but also to other hardships in life.

³For you are my rock and my fortress;

     and for your name’s sake you lead me and guide me;

⁴you take me out of of the net they have hidden for me,

     for you are my refuge.

⁵Into your hands I commit my spirit;

     you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.

⁶I hate those who pay regard to worthless idols,

     but I trust in the Lord.

⁷I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love,

     because you have seen my affliction;

     you have known the distress of my soul,

⁸and you have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy;

     you have set my feet in a broad place.

 

¹⁴But I trust in you, O Lord;

     I say, “You are my God.”

¹⁵My times are in your hand;

     rescue me from the hand of enemies and from my persecutors!

¹⁶Make your face shine on your servant;

     save me in your steadfast love!

 

²⁴Be strong, and let your heart take courage,

all you who wait for the Lord!

 Whatever your situation may be, I pray these verses give you peace, too.

Getting History Right

 

This week’s blog post is a reprint from June 20, 2016. It is another one I wrote while working on  Inferno.

Getting History Right

You’ve probably heard that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was started by a cow. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, to be exact.

The rumor was apparently begun by a reporter who wanted a colorful story to tell in his newspaper. It spread as quickly as the fire and had equally disastrous results—at least for the O’Leary family. Mrs. O’Leary never lived it down, even after the rumors were shown to be false. After all, people thought, every rumor has some truth to it.

And there was a germ of truth in this one. The fire did start in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn. But it started long after Mrs. O’Leary had finished her milking, taken away the lamp, and retired to bed in the nearby house.

One plausible theory is that a careless neighbor was smoking in the hay-filled barn. Another report speculated that men were gambling there and one of them knocked over a lamp. While the cause is still unknown, it is unlikely that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow did it.

I have started researching my next middle-grade historical novel, which takes place during the Great Chicago Fire. So how historically accurate do I need to be? Should I include the story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow?

Personally, I believe that historical fiction should be as accurate as possible. That doesn’t require me to ignore the story, but I need to place it after the fact and treat it as the rumor it was. I’m not far enough along to know whether I’ll even use it, but it can be done without portraying the contents of the rumor as fact.

With her back against the church wall, Julia pulled her legs up and hugged them. To her left, a woman held a squirming toddler and watched an older child rock back and forth.

“One of those Irish immigrants started it,” the woman told Julia. “She was milking a cow and left the lantern too close to his hoofs.” The mother moaned. “One kick, and now my children are homeless and the entire city is gone.”

“Did you see the cow do it?” Julia asked.

“No, but everybody’s saying it, so it must be true.”

The rumor of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow started within a day or two after the fire, and the existence of the rumor is factual even if the contents aren’t. The trick in writing historical fiction is to find a way to incorporate them without validating them.

Because false rumors have their role in history, too.

__________

The illustration at the head of this post was published in Harper’s Magazine in 1871. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Sifting Through the Rubble

 

This week’s blog post was originally published on August 15, 2016, when I was writing Inferno.

Sifting Through the Rubble

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 is one of the best-documented events in history. Chicago was a newspaper town, and within 48 hours most of the major papers were back up and running. They had plenty of eyewitness accounts to choose among, including those from their owners and reporters. Other educated persons quickly published their own eyewitness accounts. Then the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners held a public inquiry, heard sworn testimony from fifty-one witnesses, and published its report—all before the end of the year.

Even so, much of the evidence is inconclusive. We know where the fire started, but we don’t know how. We don’t even know exactly when. (The evidence puts it anywhere between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.) We know that the early response to the fire was a comedy of errors (combined with circumstances beyond anyone’s control), but we don’t always know who was responsible for the errors or the reasons for them. And only God knows whether the fire could have been controlled if everything had gone right.

In 1871, even the most reputable newspapers had a taste for sensationalism. Besides that, eyewitness testimony is only as reliable as the eyewitness is. Some people misinterpret what they see, some exaggerate, and some simply make things up for effect. So how much of the eyewitness accounts can I use in my middle-grade historical novel on the Great Chicago Fire?

Take this story:

One little girl, in particular, I saw, whose golden hair was loose down her back and caught afire. She ran screaming past me, and somebody threw a glass of liquor upon her, which flared up and covered her with a blue flame.

At first glance, the story looks pretty improbable. Not because the girl’s hair caught fire—that was common. But would somebody really be mean enough to throw alcohol on her? Still, maybe it wasn’t meanness and the person was so intoxicated that he thought his drink would put out the fire like water would. Besides, the eyewitness was Alexander Frear, a visitor who was a member of the New York State Assembly and a New York City commissioner. Surely we can believe someone like that.

Maybe yes, and maybe no. I can hear you saying, “Never believe a politician.” But for me, the biggest problem with Mr. Frear’s account is that it is filled with similarly dramatic events. One or two such instances might simply mean that Mr. Frear was observant and knew how to use vivid language to describe what he saw, but the entire account seems over the top.

So even if it’s true, I won’t be using the story of the girl catching fire from a liquor bath. And that’s okay, because I don’t need it. There are plenty of better documented yet still dramatic incidents scattered among the many eyewitness accounts.

It’s all a matter of sifting through the rubble.

Detecting History

 

This week’s blog post was originally published on August 6, 2018, when I was researching as as yet unpublished novel about the Siege of Vickburg during the Civil War.

Detecting History

Only detectives should write historical novels. I don’t mean the kind of detective with a magnifying glass or a knowledge of fingerprints. But writing historical novels requires a significant amount of research and deductive reasoning to get the history right.

In June, I dragged Roland along on a research trip. I am writing a book that takes place during the Civil War Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and I wanted to do some research at the library in the Old Court House (pictured above) and visit the battlefield. While there, I gathered information on a real girl named Lucy McRae. She never comes onstage in my book and is only mentioned briefly, but she was trapped in a literal cave-in and I want my protagonist to hear about that incident. Also, Lucy comes from the same income class as my protagonist, so they would probably live in the same part of town and attend the same school. Knowing more about Lucy helps me make my own character more authentic.

My earlier research indicated that Lucy was 10 or 11 years old, but the movie at the battleground said she was 13. When writing for a middle grade audience, that is a big difference, and I needed to determine whether she was younger or older or the same age as my twelve-year-old protagonist. This is where the detective works comes in.

The research library had copies of the 1861 city directory and the 1850 census but none of the 1860 census. The 1861 city directory and the 1850 census showed a William McRae who was a merchant. At the time, he had four sons and no daughters. Was he Lucy’s father? He could be if she was 10 or 11 in 1863 since she would not have been born when the 1850 census was taken. And it was also possible that she could have been 13 if the census was taken early in the year and she was born right afterwards. But the 1850 census listed the youngest boy as less than a year old, making it less likely that Lucy would have been born shortly after.

And was this even the right William McRae? Several sources identified Lucy’s father as the sheriff, and both the city directory and the 1850 census listed this William McRae as a merchant. So did he become the sheriff by 1863?

After returning home, I went online and found a copy of the 1860 census. It showed a William McRae who was listed as sheriff and named the same wife and sons as in the 1850 census. The 1960 census also showed a daughter, Lucy, and gave her age as eight, which is consistent with her being ten or eleven at the time of the siege. Mystery solved.

But it took some detective work.

Chasing Details

 

On Saturday I gave a talk at the Hammond Historical Society, which I titled “Living in the Past: The Art of Researching Historical Fiction.” In preparing for the speech, I went through a number of past blog posts that related to the subject. Since I am still trying to catch up after Roland’s knee surgery and hosting people here after Christmas, I have decided to reprint several of them this month. Even if I wasn’t backed up, though, I think they are worth repeating.

These particular blog posts are loosely tied together by the detective work they involve when working to get the historical details right. This one was originally published on November 10, 1914.

Chasing Details

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I am working on a middle grade historical novel about the Japanese American incarceration during World War II. My research included numerous memoirs and other non-fiction accounts. While they agree on the broad picture, they do not always agree on the details. So what’s a writer to do?  

Here’s one example.

My protagonist lives in Berkeley, California when the war breaks out, and she and her mother are sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, California. The sources agree that the Japanese Americans at Tanforan ate all their meals at a mess hall. But they don’t agree about who provided the dishes.

A minor point, you say? Yes, and the story certainly doesn’t hinge on its accuracy. Still, I’d like to get it right if I can. When I read a story and notice an inaccuracy, it makes me less likely to read anything else by that author. An error in my story will bother me, but it may also shrink the audience for my next book.

I purchased and read three memoirs and one near-memoir from people who were incarcerated at Tanforan. All of them mention their first meal there. In Citizen 13660, Miné Okubo says she picked up a plate, knife, and fork at the dishware counter in the mess hall and wiped her plate clean with her handkerchief. Toyo Suyemoto agrees and notes that she had to wipe off the particles of food clinging to the dishes (I Call to Remembrance: Toyo Suyemoto’s Years of Internment).

But Yoshiko Uchida and Haruko Obata both remember bringing plates and utensils to the mess hall. The Uchida family’s dishes were in their as yet undelivered luggage, so the three women took their place in line each “clutching a plate and silverware borrowed from friends who had already received their baggage” (Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family). Obata remembers, “At the dining room we had to bring our own plate, knife, fork, and spoon” (Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment). [Emphasis added.]

I could leave those details out, but they provide atmosphere and show the conditions the residents lived in. Either they brought (and washed) their own dishes, or they ate from ones that had food remnants clinging to them. One way or the other, adding the details shows that the Japanese Americans weren’t living a life of luxury at a vacation spa. (Believe it or not, that’s what some Caucasians claimed.)

So what do I do? The best I can, which in this case means to evaluate the sources and make an educated guess.

The accounts from people who were there are evenly split. But since memories fade over time, the account closest to the events is often the most accurate. Okubo’s book was published in 1946—four years after the events—while Uchida’s wasn’t published until 1982, and the other two were published even later. On the other hand, Uchida kept diaries most of her life and, although I don’t know whether she kept one at this time, she may have pulled her description from a contemporaneous account. So it is still a stalemate.

Fortunately, there is other evidence. Two photographs taken by Dorothea Lange on June 16, 1942 show people waiting in line to enter the mess hall. Lange’s own caption for the photo at the top of this post reads, in part:

Supper time! Meal times are the big events within an assembly center. This is a line-up of evacuees waiting for the B shift at 5:45 P.M. They carry with them their own dishes and cutlery in bags to protect them from the dust.

If you look closely, you will see some of the white cloth bags she refers to.

Another piece of evidence is the official “Instructions to All Persons of Japanese Ancestry.” These instructions told the Japanese Americans what to pack, and the list included “sufficient knives, forks, spoons, plates, bowls, and cups for each member of the family.”

Looking at the evidence as a whole, my best guess is that Uchida and Obata were correct and the Japanese Americans arriving at Tanforan had to use their own dishes.

Am I sure that I have it right? No. And there are other arguments for and against that I don’t have space to go into here. But my job is to do the best I can.

Because even little details can be important at times, and sloppy research is as bad as none at all.

__________

The photograph at the head of this post shows a mess line at Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno, California. It was taken by Dorothea Lange on June 16, 1942 as part of her official duties as an employee of the United States government. Because it is a government document, the photo is in the public domain.

A New Year's Reminder

 

I’ve had another hectic week. The children are gone again, but I’m still chamfering Roland around after his knee surgery. So instead of writing an original post, I’m copying a poem by one of my favorite poets. “What God Hath Promised” by Annie Johnson Flint reminds us that God will be with us throughout the coming year.

What God Hath Promised

God hath not promised skies always blue

Flower-strewn pathways all our lives through;

God hath not promised sun without rain,

Joy without sorrow, peace without pain.

 

God hath not promised we shall not know

Toil and temptation, trouble and woe;

He hath not told us we shall not bear

Many a burden, many a care.

 

God hath not promised smooth roads and wide,

Swift, easy travel, needing no guide;

Never a mountain rocky and steep,

Never a river turbid and deep.

 

But God hath promised strength for the day,

Rest for the labor, light for the way;

Grace for the trials, help from above;

Unfailing sympathy, undying love.

 

By Annie Johnson Flint