You Can't Cover Everything

 

One of the two-star reviews for The Last Year of the War criticized it for choosing to cover the experiences of German Americans who were sent to internment camps and subsequently “repatriated” to Germany while the war was still going on.¹ The reviewer felt that Susan Meissner downplayed the role of the Nazis, the unfathomable losses the Jews endured, and the horrors endured by Japanese Americans at the hand of the U.S. government. The review was even titled “More fiction than history.”

I don’t agree with any of that.

Taking the last comment first, it’s true that the story itself is fiction, but that’s what novels are. On the other hand, the historical events and their repercussions appear to have been well-researched. The first two parts cover the actions of the FBI in “identifying” people who might be traitors, how that affected their families, and what it was like to live in an internment camp. Except for one or two non-essential facts that the author admits to changing for the sake of the story, her descriptions match my own research for my book about the Japanese American experience.

I haven’t researched what it was like to live in Germany during the last year of World War II (Part 3), but I have no reason to believe those events weren’t equally well researched. Given that, my conclusion is that the reviewer has a very limited understanding of history, which is not a single event or even a string of events but multiple experiences occurring simultaneously.

In this post, I’ll focus my comments on every historical fiction writer’s dilemma of how much to cover. Sometimes the answer is bound up in the choice of the protagonist, and that seems to be the case here. Meissner concentrates on what her particular protagonist would have known and experienced, which is the way most good stories are told.

Meissner’s protagonist, Elise, is a German American girl who lives in the United States during the first part of the war and doesn’t return to Germany until the Jews have already been sent away to concentration camps. That means that she didn’t have any actual experience with them. The U.S. government banned war news from the U.S. internment camps and the Nazis perverted it when she returned to Germany, so she would have known little about the Jews’ situation until after Germany surrendered. As to the role of the Nazis, there are plenty of indications in Part 3 that her father is opposed to them but believes his opposition must be subtle to be effective. And when Elise does learn about the fate of the Jews, she is horrified and sickened by it.

The reviewer is also wrong when she denigrates the book’s discussion of the horrors endured by the Japanese Americans. Again, Elise is limited by her own experience, but she does share the part of the story that she hears from her Japanese American friend.

Every part of history is important, but it’s such a vast subject that no book—fiction or nonfiction—can even begin to scratch the surface. So every author needs to decide where to focus his or her chronicle.

So why did Meissner choose to tell the story of a German American girl with limited exposure to the worst horrors of the war? I can’t see into Meissner’s mind, but I can tell you how it might have played out in mine. When I look for a subject for my historical novels, one consideration is how many similar books cover it. There are so many good books about the holocaust—both fiction and non-fiction—that I’m not sure I can add anything to what is already out there. Meissner may have felt the same.

When I chose to cover the Japanese American experience in Desert Jewels, it was mainly because I felt that today’s young readers needed to know about that part of America’s history, but it was also partly because I thought there was room for more books on the subject. There are books for middle-grade readers that are better than mine, but I couldn’t find any about a girl who was part Japanese and part Caucasian, so that was something new I could bring to the mix.

There are even fewer books about the German American experience during World War II, so Meissner may have felt it was an issue that needed addressing.

I don’t know anything about Meissner beyond the short bio on her website, so this is pure conjecture, but she also may have felt more comfortable writing about someone more like herself. The Last Year of the War came out at the height of the “Own Voices” movement, although was probably written before then. Even so, she may have been influenced by the same kind of thinking that discouraged people from writing about other cultures than their own.

Next week I’ll address the issue with a lengthy intro and a reprint of one of my 2018 blog posts.

The Darker Side of U.S. History

 

When my first middle-grade historical novel was still a work-in-progress, I took the first chapter to a critique group that I attended a few times before deciding it wasn’t for me. The very first words in the book were “‘Dirty Jap!’” and one woman said I couldn’t start it that way because the words are offensive. Yes, they are, but that was the point. Besides, the context makes it clear that the words were said by a bully and that the book would take the opposite point of view. So how did I handle the criticism?

I kept the opening as it was.

People see history in different ways, and that’s understandable. You can disagree about motives or even about cause and effect, but you should never ignore facts.

That’s why I didn’t change my opening.

Unfortunately, it’s fact that some Caucasian Americans saw Japanese Americans as “dirty Japs” during and before World War II. Fortunately, that perception has mostly changed, although there will always be some mean-spirited people who denigrate anyone who looks differently than he or she does.

As I mentioned last week, Susan Meissner’s novel The Last Year of the War is told by a German American girl whose family was confined at the Crystal City Internment Camp during World War II and then sent back to Germany while the war was still going on. One of the two-star reviews called the book political because in the reviewer’s opinion, it had “an Anti-American flavor running through it.” Another review said it “walked the line of America bashing because of the use of internment camps.” In my opinion, both of these reviews ignore the facts.

It’s fact that the United States arrested some legal residents who had immigrated from Japan or Germany or Italy and incarcerated them on “evidence” of treason that that would be laughed out of court today, and it appears that none were ever convicted of treason. As a result, it’s my opinion, and that of most historians, that their confinement was due to suspicion based on fear and little else. It’s also fact that many American citizens of Japanese descent were confined in internment camps for nothing other than their ancestry and that some American citizens of German and Italian descent were confined at Crystal City because that was the only way the family could stay together. Crystal City was a real place, and many of the families who were sent there were later sent back to the country of the father’s birth.

I’m a loyal American and would rather live here than anywhere else. But the perfect country doesn’t exist because every country, including ours, is run by flawed human beings. Yes, our version of the concentration camp was infinitely more humane than the German version, but we still stripped innocent people of their possessions and freedom. 

As a historical fiction writer, I believe I have a responsibility to point out some of the darker parts of American history even when it offends some people. Susan Meissner evidently feels the same.

Next week I’ll talk about a review from someone who apparently believes that The Last Year of the War actually sugarcoats the facts.

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The photograph at the top of this post was taken by Dorothea Lange in April 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. (I did try to find a photo of the Crystal City camp, but most were not good quality and, more importantly, I couldn’t determine whether they were in the public domain, so I chose not to use them.)

Star Reviews

 

I’ve been reading The Last Year of the War by Susan Meissner, and I recommend the book to anyone interested in historical fiction. The story is told by a German American girl whose family was confined at the Crystal City internment camp during World War II and then “repatriated” to Germany while the war was still going on.  A significant part of the story involves her friendship with a Japanese American girl who she met at Crystal City.

My first middle-grade historical novel, Desert Jewels, is about a Japanese American girl who was living in California when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and was subsequently sent to the Topaz internment camp in Utah. So I have always been interested in the internment camps. Since half of my blood traces back to Germany, that connection interested me, too.

The Last Year of the War is heavy on narrative, which is not my favorite writing style, but it works here. I also found one or two minor factual errors about the Japanese “removal,” but the author admits that she has changed a few non-essential facts for the sake of the story. Other than that, her research matches my own for Desert Jewels.

When I heard about The Last Year of the War, I checked it out on Amazon. I started with the “look inside” feature and moved on to the reviews.

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I don’t generally bother with four- or five-star reviews. Reading tastes differ, and I’ve been bored by many books that are heavy on good reviews. No, I head straight for the one- and two-star reviews. Among those, I discount the ones that show a general dislike for the author’s style since, as I said, reading tastes differ. Instead, I look to see if any of the reviews point out excessive swearing or explicit sex or—worst of all—bad research.

As you can see from the graphic at the top of this post, there were no one-star reviews, so I moved on to the two-star reviews. Most of them said more about the reviewers than they did about the book, and they made me angry. Or, more accurately, they made me sad that the reviewers lacked understanding of human nature and the value of recognizing the darker days of America’s history.

Those will be the subjects of subsequent blog posts, so stay tuned.

Technology in Contemporary Fiction

 

Contemporary fiction is often defined as fiction that is set in the current time period. It’s a tall order, but my goal is to write my contemporary fiction in such a way that it will seem as current ten years from now as it does today.

This is a fast-changing world, and many things will be different in ten years. Even so, I’d like to minimize the references that date my contemporary fiction. Unless the political scene is important to the story, which it hasn’t been yet, I can avoid that issue. Unfortunately, there are two other constantly changing matters that affect everyone’s lives, and I can’t avoid them. I talked about slang last week, and this week’s post covers technology.

Lately, I’ve been working on two contemporary novels. One is women’s fiction, and, as you would expect, the protagonist has a cell phone that she uses for long conversations with her sister and for texts to and from her business associates. Since she makes her living as an author, however, she also needs a laptop.

Sending a text drives me crazy because it is much slower than typing or even writing something out in longhand. As a writer, using a virtual keyboard would never work when I am in the throes of inspiration and the words come flowing out. I need a traditional keyboard or paper and pen to keep up with my thoughts. I also prefer a larger screen, so a laptop is a must-have for me, and it makes sense that my author protagonist also uses a laptop.

My other contemporary work-in-progress is middle-grade fiction with a seventh grader as my protagonist. She uses a laptop for her schoolwork and has recently gotten her first cell phone.

With technology permeating our society, the only way to eliminate all mention of it is to create characters who are isolated from the world. Since that wouldn’t work with either of my plots, I can’t expect the story to ring true unless the characters make use of the technology that every reader knows they must have. So my characters have laptops and cell phones, and there isn’t much I can do about it. I’m hoping both will still be in use ten years from now, but you never know. The cell phone might turn into a wrist communicator, and the laptop may be replaced by something that takes voice dictation and recites it back. It may even be the same wrist communicator that does it all.

For now, however, that technology isn’t in common use, and the story would be unrealistic if I imported it into novels that take place today. If I want authenticity, I have to go with the technology that people use now.

Sometimes you just have to work with what you have and hope it will be good enough.

Evergreen Dialogue

 I just finished the first draft of a contemporary children’s novel, and one of my biggest challenges was writing the dialogue. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but it was even harder than writing dialogue for my historical fiction. That’s because my historical books are frozen at one particular point in time, while contemporary fiction should normally be timeless.¹

There are exceptions, of course, such as contemporary fiction tied to current events. I’ve also read books where the writers are so intent on showing how well they understand the current generation that their fiction is outdated by the time it gets published.

Most contemporary fiction aims to stay current as time passes, however. This means that the language choices must be evergreen.

This is particularly important when using slang. I checked several sources and they aren’t entirely consistent about the specifics, but they all agree that slang means words that are used in a casual setting but are avoided in a formal one. For example, people often use “okay” or “awesome” in everyday conversation but you rarely find those words in an academic paper or a formal speech.

So why not avoid slang altogether? Unfortunately, that isn’t an option for a writer who wants to present a realistic picture. Take the book I’ve been working on as an example. The protagonist and her friends are preteens, so they would naturally use slang. If they didn’t, the story would become stilted and lose all authenticity. However, many of the slang words in use today are passing fads and would date the book. Even worse, they might not even be understood by my readers five years from now. The trick is to find slang words that have been part of the language for a long time and continue to be used and understood today. While there is no guarantee, this proven slang is more likely to stay evergreen than new words are.

In the graphic at the head of this page, the girl on the left is using current slang of recent origin, while the boy on the right is using evergreen slang.² I can’t predict what will happen with language in the future, of course. Maybe some of the words on the left will catch on and become evergreen, while some on the right might soon fall out of use. Still, if I don’t want my fiction to become dated, I’ll stick with the ones on the right.

Even so, I’m worried that limiting the dialogue to evergreen slang will make my characters sound too grown up. I’ll see how that works itself out in later drafts.

Next week I’ll talk about another issue that can date contemporary fiction.

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¹ For a discussion of slang in historical novels, see my blog posts from January 25, 2021 and February 1, 2021.

² “Adulting” means acting like a grown-up and doing things a real adult would do; “sus” is short for “suspicious”; “fire” is the same as “cool” or “awesome”; and “cooked” means exhausted or overwhelmed. Hopefully I don’t have to define the words on the right.

"Lonely Rock"

 

Twelve-year-old Jessie enjoys living in small-town Maine in 1925, but then her father takes a job as an assistant lighthouse keeper and moves his family to a remote island. Forced to face her fears and deal with loneliness, illness, shipwrecks, and stormy weather, can she survive the storm in her own heart?

That’s the plot summary for my newly-published middle-grade historical novel, Lonely Rock. I rarely use this blog to promote my own books, but this is one of the few exceptions.

Lonely Rock is primarily aimed at girls ages 8–12, but I hope that it will appeal to an older audience, as well. I am one of the many adults still enjoy reading middle-grade fiction, and, if you are too, give it a try.

With Christmas coming up, consider buying Lonely Rock for your daughter, granddaughter, niece, or anyone else on your list. The novel is available both in paperback and for Kindle, and here is the link to it on Amazon.

Lonely Rock: Page, Kaye, Camp, Kathryn Page: 9798990089129: Amazon.com: Books

If you read Lonely Rock and like it (or even if you don’t), please leave a review. Honest reviews are the best way for readers to decide if a book is for them.

Thanks for allowing me this blatant self-promotion.

Michigan's Eastern Upper Peninsula

 

As I mentioned last week, Roland and I spent several days last month in the eastern part of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. While staying at my brother’s cabin, we took excursions to Tahquamenon Falls and Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Then, on our way along U.S. 2, we visited Fayette State Park. The first two were mainly for my research, although we enjoyed them, too, and the last was solely for fun.

One of my works in progress is a women’s fiction novel about a writer who is burned out. To get the rest and relaxation she needs for her recovery, she takes a trip to the U.P. and ends up deciding to stay there. The story is not a travelogue, but I am adding some scenes at local tourist areas for authenticity and variety.

Jo gets better acquainted with people in her new community during a church picnic at Tahquamenon Falls. The photo at the top of this post shows the Upper Falls. The one below shows the Lower Falls, which wind around an island that is connected to the parking lot, concessions, and picnic area by a foot bridge.

I wanted to get all the details of that visit right, but my primary purpose for our trip to the falls was to see if the picnic area at the Lower Falls is large enough for a small church picnic. It is, as you can see from the next photo.

There is also a large picnic area at the Upper Falls, but one advantage of having the church event take place at the Lower Falls is that there are greater recreational opportunities there. Roland and I did not wade in the water at the Lower Falls, but, like the people in the next photo, my characters do.

The next day we went to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, known to locals as “the Soo.” As a child, my family went there every other Saturday so my father could visit parishioners in the hospital and the rest of us could exchange our books at the library. My father loved watching the lake freighters from the window in his office at the church in DeTour, and we never went to the Soo without heading to the locks and watching the boats go through.

So of course that is one of things my protagonist does. Her companion checks the schedule and times it so they are there when a freighter goes through. I didn’t think to do that, so we were fortunate to arrive while the Presque Isle was going through on its way upbound. The next photo shows the ship leaving the Soo Locks and heading into Lake Superior.

Another research reason for going to the Soo was that I wanted to get a feel for the Meijers superstore where my protagonist would go when she wanted to shop for groceries she couldn’t get nearer to her fictional village. Unfortunately, it made me jealous because it was larger and had more variety than my nearest Meijers or any of my neighborhood grocery stores.

As I mentioned in last week’s post, I’m placing my fictional village on U.S. 2, which runs along the northern shore of Lake Michigan. As we were following U.S. 2, we took a side trip to Fayette State Park, which we visited purely as tourists.

From 1867 to 1891, Fayette was a company town that produced iron for use in the steel industry. Roland was interested because he spent the first half of his working life in an East Chicago steel mill, and I was interested in how the families lived. I did learn something, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough to set a story there and I haven’t found any other good resources, either. So don’t look for a book about Fayette.

The final two photos show the town’s business district and the furnace complex where the iron was smelted.

The trip to the U.P. was both informative and fun, but next week I’ll have an announcement about a different book.