Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Characters

How a Book Inspired a Character

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I was struggling while I was writing the manuscript of what would become Brookhaven. I was up to my eyeballs in research; I had the overall story arc in my head. I knew it would be 1915, and the character of Sam McClure would be explaining his life during the Civil War.

I had one problem.

What would he be telling the story in the first place? Why would he be recounting both what he had previously told his family and what he hadn’t told them? I knew that in the 1890-1920 period, memoirs of the Civil War were a major genre of autobiography, but this wasn’t a case of Sam writing his story or dictating his story for it to be published as a memoir. The whole idea was him to tell the story not as it happened or chronologically, but how different events of the war shaped the rest of his life.

Bah, humbug. 

I happened to be reading a biography of a woman journalist. Entitled Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks: The Life and Times of Lucile Morris Upton, it has been written by Susan Croce Kelly, herself a former journalist at the now-shuttered St. Louis Globe-Democrat.

Susan and I had met (I can’t believe it’s been this long) some 45years ago, when we both worked in public relations. In fact, we were in the same speechwriting department for a few years. Another speechwriter in the group named Jim Fullinwider and I had lived through a book she was writing at the time, Route 66: The Highway and Its People. She used weekends and vacation time to travel the length of the old Route 66, at least where it still existed. 

The highway started in Chicago and end in Los Angeles, and it was the stuff of legends. It still is today. Jim and I would sit in Susan’s office on Monday mornings, listening in wonder as she told of her weekend Interviews. She’s a born storyteller, and she was telling us stories that we and most other people had never heard before. In 2014, she published her second book, Father of Route 66: The Story of Cy Avery. 

As I was struggling with myself over my own novel, I glanced at the cover of her Lucile Upton book. And I thought. If I went back about a decade in time from the photo of Lucile Upton, I would see the fashions of 1915. (I can’t explain why that thought occurred; it just did.)

Eureka! That was it. Sam McClure would be telling his story, shrouded in mystery still unsolved 50 years after the war had ended, to a newspaperwoman. And her story would turn out to be entangled with his. 

Elizabeth Putnam was born. Headstrong journalist, determined to make her way in what had been a man’s world, not intimidated by what others thought, passionate about women’s right to vote as a first step, and hoping to be sent by her New York newspaper to cover the Great War in Europe.

That’s when I rewrote the beginning of Brookhaven. And that’s when I started rewriting the entire manuscript. Because Brookhaven was never meant to be a story of only the Civil War; it was the story of how a war changed lives and a culture, and how it continued to do that. 

You might say I owe Lucile Morris Upton and Susan Kelly a debt of gratitude. They both helped me tell a story.

Related:

Newspaperwoman of the Ozarks by Susan Kelly.

Top photograph: Lucile Morris Upton about 1915. She would be about six years younger than the character of Elizabeth Putnam in Brookhaven.

A Bible Verse and a Fictional Scene

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For the past few months, our church pastors have been preaching a series on the Gospel as seen in the life of David. We’re nearing the end of the series. The sermons have focused on some of the highlights of David’s life, including his anointing by the prophet Samuel, the confrontation with Goliath, the growing animosity of King Saul, the friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan, David becoming king, and Bathsheba. 

Last Sunday, the sermon centered on the end of the rebellion by David’s son Absalom (2 Samuel 18). The army gathered by Absalom has been defeated and scattered; Absalom himself, trying to escape, is caught by his trademark flowing hair in the branches of a tree. He’s dangling there when found by David’s general, who wastes no time in ignoring David’s earlier command to spare Absolom’s life and putting the young man to the sword. 

I’m familiar with the account. I’ve read it many times, my attention caught by the image of Absalom dangling from the tree limb. It is a truism that you can read a book of the Bible, a passage, a chapter, and even a verse scores of times and not see something that will suddenly catch your attention during an additional reading.

This is what I had overlooked: “The battle spread over the face of all the country, and the forest devoured more people that day than the sword” (2 Samuel 18:8, English Standard Version; italics added for emphasis). The penultimate example of this was Absalom himself, but I wondered what had happened to everyone else.

My mind strayed 2,800 years forward to the American Civil War, the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864 near Richmond, Virginia. No rain had fallen for weeks, and the dense brush of the woods was tinder-dry. When the Union army began firing its artillery, the resulting explosions ignited the woods. Soldiers on both sides found themselves not only fighting the enemy but also and even worse foe – a quickly spreading forest fire. (It’s said that the Union artillery killed more of its own men than anything the Confederates did.) 

For my novel Brookhaven, I read extensively about this battle. It’s the setting for the second of three encounters between Captain John Haygood and the young teenager Samuel McClure. Haygood has been wounded and can’t walk unassisted. Not recognizing Sam at first, at gunpoint he orders Sam to take him back to the Union line, dodging animals like snakes fleeing the fire, dying soldiers, and the sounds of single gunshots as the dying and wounded killed themselves rather than be knowingly consumed by the raging fire. It was a fictional scene based entirely on what really happened.

From all accounts, the Wilderness was a horrific battle. If there was a “winner,” it was General Lee’s Confederates. But Ulysses Grant, now in command of the Union army attacking Lee, had something Lee did not – an almost endless supply of recruits – and he was not shy about using them. The Battle of the Wilderness extended for weeks, and it grew to include the Battle of Spotsylvania Courthouse.

It’s a crucial scene in the novel. A year after Grierson’s Raid came to Sam’s hometown of Brookhaven, Mississippi, he again meets the man who had a huge impact on his mother’s life and, indirectly, his own. They will meet once more during the final Battle of Petersburg in 1865.

Absolom’s army was fleeing woods burning from artillery fire, but one can sense the desperation of men who will be judged traitors to King David. They would have met obstacles  like lack of paths, ditches and ravines, wild animals, sudden drop-offs, and, like their leader, unexpected low-hanging branches. 

Researching and writing that scene in Brookhaven gave me a better understanding of that Bible verse. Even when it’s me, I’m fascinated in the way a writer’s mind can work.

Related:

Bear in the Wilderness by Donald Waldemar.

The Battle of the Wilderness by Gordon Rhea.

Diary of a Confederate Tarheel Soldier by Louis Leon.

Hell Itself: The Battle of the Wilderness May 5-7, 1864 by Chris Mackowski.

Photograph by Filip Zrnzevic via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Three Fictional Encounters in Three Factual Events

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In my novel Brookhaven, the teenaged Sam McClure has three fateful encounters with John Haygood. The three happen in successive years, and each of the three involve Civil War military operations.

I was reminded of this when Emerging Civil War posted articles on two of the three operations a week apart this month.

The first encounter happens during Grierson’s Raid, an operation ordered by Ulysses S. Grant to distract the Confederates during his siege of Vicksburg in 1863. Some 1,700 Union cavalrymen rode through Mississippi, starting at the Tennessee border and finishing in Union-occupied Louisiana. They tore up railroad track and caused considerable havoc, but more importantly, they kept the Confederates focused away from Grant transferring his army across the river to besiege Vicksburg from the east.

One of the towns visited by Grierson’s cavalrymen was Brookhaven, where they burned the train station and tore up track. In the novel, Captain Haygood meets Sam in the McClure General Store, where Sam’s grandfather is accidentally pushed against a counter and dies in the boy’s arms. Sam later hears a conversation between Haygood and Sam’s mother Louisa, and he realizes what their relationship had been years before. It’s that knowledge which sets the story of Sam’s enlistment in the Confederate Army into motion.

An artist’s depiction of trying to escape the fires with wounded during the Battle of the Wilderness. (Library of Congress)

The second encounter happens a year later, during the Battle of the Wilderness near Richmond. Samis carrying messages between generals, and in the thick of the fighting, he meets John Haygood once again, this time at the point of a pistol. 

This battle was horrendous, even in the context of all the other Civil War battles. The Wilderness was dense scrub forest. The weather had been dry for weeks, and Union artillery shells ignited the dense, dry woods into a blazing inferno. The Union guns are said to have killed more of their own army’s men than anything the Confederates did. Wounded men, unable to escape on foot, often shot themselves rather than be burned alive.

The Emerging Civil War story I read on July 3 was about an Australian general in World War I, Sir John Monash, who is considered to be one of the best generals of that war. One reason is how closely he studied the American Civil War’s Battle of the Wilderness and how Grant modified his strategic objectives. I’m neither a veteran nor a military historian, but I read so much about the battle for the novel that I think I felt like one. 

A depiction of the Union breakthrough at Petersburg, April 2, 1865. (Library of Congress)

The third encounter between young Sam McClure and John Haygood happens during another military encounter, the final Battle of Petersburg. Petersburg, south of Richmond, was an important railroad junction to keep Richmond and Lee’s army supplied. It had been under Union pressure for a considerable period, and the pressure was finally working. Petersburg’s fall forced Lee (and the Confederate government) to abandon Richmond. Lee fled west, reaching the town of Appomattox Courthouse, where he surrendered. 

Sam, still running messages between armies, takes cover in the woods during a Union cavalry charge. And it is the mortally wounded John Haygood whose horse collapses there, almost at Sam’s feet. This third and final encounter will lead to a meeting two years later.

I don’t such a cavalry charge took place in fact, but Emerging Civil War published an article July 11 that described the final piercing of Petersburg’s defense on April 2, 1865. That would be the date of Sam’s final meeting with Haygood. A week later, Lee surrendered. (I deliberately chose April 9 as Sam’s birthday; the surrender happened the day Sam turned 15.)

I probably shouldn’t be surprised; this is what happens with historical novels. But I find myself still taken with how factual reports continue to bring me right back to the story I wrote.

Related:

Bloody Promenade by Stephen Cushman.

The Battle of the Wilderness by Gordon Rhea.

Echoes of the Wilderness: Grant, Lee, and Monash’s Art of War – Leigh Goggin at Emerging Civil War.

Petersburg Breakthrough – Edward Alexander at Emerging Civil War. 

Top illustration: Major Benjamin Grierson and his cavalry make a triumphant entry into Union-controlled Baton Rouge at the conclusion of their famous raid through Mississippi. (Library of Congress)

“Mosby’s Rangers” by James Joseph Williamson

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In my novel Brookhaven, I have the 13-year-old Sam McClure sent to the Confederate army in the East. His father had fought with Robert E. Lee in the Mexican American War, and Lee hoped that the young Sam had learned some of his father’s espionage and survival skills. The young man is assigned to a unit called Colby’s Rangers, and after a few weeks of basic training is sent with others to prepare for Lee’s invasion of the North, which culminated in the Battle of Gettysburg. 

The model for Colby’s Rangers in the novel is an actual unit called Mosby’s Rangers. It was less involved in espionage and more involved in disruptions of federal lines, camps, and supply lines. When General Jeb Stuart “rode around” the Union army of George McClellan in 1862, it was Mosby’s Rangers leading the cavalry.

Beginning in April 1863, James Joseph Williamson was a private who gained what many Confederate soldiers and cavalrymen desired – a spot in Mosby’ Rangers. Some 44 years later in 1909, he published a memoir of his time with the unit, which stretched to the end of the war in 1865. Mosby’s Rangers: A Record of the Operations of the Fourth-Third Battalion Virginia Cavalry, From Its Organization to the Surrender is the title. and it was republished as an e-book in 2018. (It’s also available as an audio book.)

Memoirs of the Civil War by soldiers were common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Civil War generation was dying out, and much of the story had not been told. Generals had been their memoirs published; Ulysess S. Grant’s memoirs were a bestseller.  But now it seemed it was the soldiers and lower officers who were publishing accounts “from the ground level.”

Williamson published two editions in his lifetime; the second corrected errors and added information. He had kept a diary during the war years, and the diary became the basis for the memoir. 

It’s a highly readable, interesting, and often thrilling account. John S. Mosby was a Virginian attorney when he joined the Confederate Army. He caught the eye of Jeb Stuart, and he soon became known as one of Stuart’s key men. Mosby’s Rangers operated primarily in the Shenandoah Valley and northern Viriginia, he it’s fair to say they ran circles (literally and figuratively) around Union armies. 

Col. John Mosby

He was nicknamed the “Gray Ghost;” his cavalrymen could slip through enemy lines almost like phantoms. One of the most famous of the Rangers’ exploits was in March 1863. In the early morning hours, a group of 30 Rangers led by Mosby discovered a break in Union lines. They traveled several miles to Fairfax County Courthouse and captured Union Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton, two captains, 30 soldiers, and nearly 60 horses without a shot being fired to a man lost. And then they made their way back to Confederate lines. The story electrified the South and outraged the North; it also earned Mosby a promotion. After Stuart’s death, Mosby reported directly to Lee.

Williamson was one of the 29 men who accomplished “the impossible raid,” and his account is riveting.

Mosby survived the war, despite a bounty placed on his head by Grant. Impressed by what Mosby had accomplished, Grant would pardon him when he became President. They became friends, and Mosby – to the dismay of his Southern fans – became a Republican and worked to unify the country. His popularity diminished rapidly.

Mosby’s Rangers is a great story, told first-hand by a man who was there and saw it happen.

Top photograph: A group of Mosby’s Rangers, with Mosby in the center.

Finding an Army Medal in a Small-Town Antique Store

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I’m always suspicious of Facebook messages coming from people I don’t know. If it seems that a message might possibly be legitimate, I’ll check the person’s profile page. More often than not, it’s people from Hong Kong or the Philippines or Africa, or people who names and profile photos clearly don’t match. Click delete.

A few weeks ago, one arrived that raised my suspicions, but the sender seemed legitimate. And he was. He asked me if I was the author of this article at Emerging Civil War: “Research for a Novel Upended a Family Legend.” Yep, that was me.

He said he had an interesting story to tell me, and we eventually connected by phone. 

Cross of Military Service

Some weeks before, he’d been in an antique store in Paris, Texas, north of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He collects Civil War memorabilia, and he’d found a medal with a serial number on the back.

The medal was a Cross of Military Service. It had been awarded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDAC) to veterans whose ancestors fought in the Civil War and who themselves were veterans of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, and/or the Global War on Terror. He said finding a medal like this was highly unusual, because families tended to hold on to them, even after the awardee’s death. 

He contacted the UDAC and learned that this one was even more unusual – it had been awarded to a woman for her service in both World War II and Korea. Her name was U.S. Army Major Ruby Edwina McCain. She was born in 1913 and died in 1991. The UDAC was able to tell him that her Civil War ancestor was Jarvis Seale, born in 1824 in Amite County, Mississippi, and died in 1862 at the Battle of Shiloh. Ruby was his great-granddaughter.

The man who found the medal went looking for Jarvis Seale, and what did he find but my article at Emerging Civil War.

Ruby Edwina McCain

For a long time, Jarvis Seale was the mystery man in the Young family Bible records. No one knew why he was there. Family Search eventually revealed the reason – he had married a Martha Young, the oldest sister of my great-grandfather Samuel, who originally bought the Bible and entered all of the family records. Samuel would have known his brother-in-law and remembered him in the Bible. Samuel also lost his two older brothers in the war.

What puzzled my new friend was what had puzzled several people – why was Jarvis listed in Find-a-Grave and Family Search as buried in a cemetery in Clarksville, Texas? The fact is, he wasn’t. He was buried in one of several mass graves for Confederate dead at Shiloh. At some point years later, one of his daughters moved with her husband to Clarksville, and she had placed a memorial stone there in the family plot. That was two mysteries solved – the Bible’s mystery name and the Texas gravestone.

Ruby McCain was from Clarksville. Her grandmother had been the one to arrange for the memorial stone. Clarksville is about 20 miles south of the Oklahoma border, and 30 miles east of Paris, Texas, where Ruby’s medal ended up. Our best guess is that a relative (Ruby had no children) had included the medal in an estate sale or given it away, and it ended up in the antique store.

Jarvis and Martha furnished their names for characters in my novel Brookhaven. A medal, a memorial stone, and a book brought them back from the past, facilitated by Facebook messenger and a phone call.

Rereading the “Dancing Priest” Series

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Someone once asked me if I reread my own books after they’re published. And the answer is yes. Part of the reason is research and “story-checking.” When I was writing the Dancing Priest series, I had to reread the early books to make sure I was keeping story line, characters, and settings consistent and accurate. 

But I must confess that, sometimes, I reread the books simply for pleasure. Occasionally, I get so wrapped up in the stories that I forget I wrote them. I suppose that’s a good thing. Yes, I have favorite scenes in every book that I like to reread, but I do reread the books in their entirety, about once a year.

I’ve had readers tell me that they reread the Dancing Priest series, too. Last week, Bill Grandi, a pastor in Indiana, started writing about it at his blog Living in the Shadow. This is part of what he had to say about the first book, Dancing Priest; he captured the very heart of the story in just a few words:

“Glynn has weaved together a wonderful story that even a non-religious person would enjoy. Even though Michael is a fictional character, one begins to admire this young man and his passion for life. Grounded without being preachy, Dancing Priest is a wonderful story of faith, hope, caring for others, putting other’s interests before your own, and being sensitive to those around us.”

And here’s what Bill wrote about the second one, A Light Shining, after summarizing a conversation between the Anglican priest Michael Kent and a 15-year-old boy on the steps of Michael’s church in San Francisco:

“…Each one of us matters to God. He sent Jesus to die so that we could be forgiven. While a story written by Mr. Young, the conversation is heard all over the planet. Every person has value and merit. Each one matters. We are all sinners, for sure, but we still matter to God.”

It might be time to reread my books (again). Thank you, Bill Grandi.