Dancing Priest

Author and Novelist Glynn Young

Writing

“Brookhaven” is Published!

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It’s always a milestone in a life when a new book is published. Brookhaven, a historical novel about the Civil War and what happened after, has made its appearance in the world.

It’s not a novel about battles and military strategy. Instead, it’s about the people who were involved, some directly and some indirectly (and virtually every American alive at the time was affected). 

This is the summary:

“In 1915, young reporter Elizabeth Putnam of the New York World is assigned a story on the Gray Wisp. New information has come to light about this Confederate spy in the Civil War, a figure of legend, myth, and wildly competing claims. What no knows is the man’s identity. The reporter follows leads which eventually bring her to the small Mississippi town of Brookhaven. He agrees to tell his story, a tale of North and South, loss in wartime, narrow escapes from death in battles, family survival, the poetry of Longfellow, and love. And Elizabeth soon finds her own story has forever become part of the Gray Wisp’s.”

Brookhaven is essentially two stories – that of Sam McClure, who enlisted young and finds himself enrolled as a spy, and that of Elizabeth Putnam, a young reporter trying to make her way and her name in what was a very male world of journalism.

The book includes a character list (my wife insisted I include one) and a bibliography (I read more books and did more research than I can remember). 

I’ll write more about the inspiration for the book (a movie I saw in 1959 and a family story that turned out to be more legend than fact. For now, it’s feelings of relief, satisfaction, and no-small amount of joy I’m experiencing. And if you want more information, just ask.

Brookhaven is available here on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions. 

Related:

A note from T.S. Poetry Press on the release of Brookhaven (including the author’s note).

“Christmas Oranges,” a short story – Cultivating Oaks Press.

“The Last Days of the War” by Dr. Henry T. Bahnson

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The half-century after the end of the Civil War saw an outpouring of memoirs by veterans on both sides. Some were written by war heroes, like Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman (and were bestsellers as well). For time, it must have seemed like every general and officer in the war was writing an account. A joke made the rounds that so many people had witnessed Robert E. Lee’s signing of the surrender to Grant at Appomattox that both armies had crowded into the room.

For a time, those who had been privates – enlisted and drafted – penned their remembrances as well. These accounts, and I’ve read a considerable number number for my soon-to-be-published historical novel Brookhaven, are not so much concerned with strategy and battle outcomes as they are with day-to-day survival, getting enough food, mud (lots of mud, especially when you have to walk through it), in short, what everyman experienced. You find none of the romance of war in these accounts; what you do find is gritty commentary about the war and the hope to make it home one day.

Henry Bahnson was a private in a North Carolina company. He was a much older man, and a physician, when he wrote his account of the last days of the war. He narrowed his story to the period from April 2 to April 9, 1865 – the final week for Robert E. Lee’s army. He was there, and he very nearly died several times that week.

His story, “The Last Days of the War,” was published as an article in The North Caorlina Booklet, a periodical of “great events in North Carolina history” akin to what we know as historical or academic history journals today. It’s been digitized and made available through North Carolina Digital Collections. The article was originally published in 1903.

His account begins with the final siege of Petersburg, some 20 miles south of Richmond and a critical rail junction for keeping the Confederate capital and Lee’s army supplied. He describes the fighting – how it began (interrupting a planned holiday), the intensity of the battle, the deaths of friends, one literally shot between the eyes right next to him. He evaded death several times, gradually making his way to the body of Lee’s army, which was in full flight westward. 

The situation was more complex than “Lee’s army fleeing westward from Grant” might imply. Skirmishes and small battles erupted along the way. At one point, Bahnson and the bare handful of men with him captured 102 Union troops and their officers. Not long after, he himself was taken prisoner. He spent his final days in the way in a prisoner camp, with no food; Grant’s supply trains had been destroyed or left behind as the army raced after Lee. The Union soldiers got what food was left; Confederate prisoners were reduced to chewing roots, tree bark, and buds, sucking the inside of their haversacks, and drinking water “by the gallon to lessen the aching void of hunger.”

Dr. Henry Bahnson in old age

He was eventually paroled and freed, making his way home to North Carolina. He’d lost 38 pounds in three weeks, and his father didn’t recognize him. The comforts of home and family, including a warm bath, forever dispelled “the glamour and illusions of the pomp and pride, and circumstances of glorious war.” 

Bahnson’s experiences run counter to the myths of romance and “the Lost Cause” that came to be so connected to the South for generations. This was war at ground level, focused on what soldiers constantly contended with – hunger, mud, cold, and the regular threat of injury or death.

Related:

A Gory Account without Glory: Futility and Humility in the Last Days of the Lee’s Army.

When Fiction Seems to Predict Fact

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The Dancing Priest novels seem to be back in the fiction-becomes-fact business.

Last week, after saying he would not resign, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby did, in fact, resign. This followed the release of the Makin Report, which documented the failings of the Church of England (COE) in a cover-up of an abuse scandal. The scandal went back to the 1980s when a barrister named John Smyth abused young teens at COE church camps, slipped out of England when it appeared the law was onto him, and went on to victimize more boys in Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Welby’s sin: he learned about the abuse in 2013 but failed to report it to authorities. Smyth could have been brought to justice at that time; he died in 2018.

One as-of-yet-unanswered question is if Welby was the only COE official to know. It’s unlikely that others, including people high in the hierarchy, also didn’t know. The scandal may not be over. And lest we think this type of scandal only happens to the big established denominations like the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church, there are lessons here for all of us. A church I’ve attended had a member of the staff get involved in an inappropriate and illegal relationship; the difference was that the head pastor, as soon as he was told, called the police. That’s how it’s supposed to work, no matter how damaging it might be to an organization’s reputation. Righteousness trumps reputation, as Bernard Howard wrote for the Gospel Coalition.

In Dancing Prophet (2018), the fourth of the Dancing Priest novels, Michael Kent-Hughes has an abuse scandal thrust upon him. He’s a former COE priest and now the king, and he’s simultaneously dealing with a developing church scandal and a collapse of the government of Great London. His church nemesis is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sebastian Rowland, who has spent considerable time covering up an abuse scandal that threatens to blow the church apart.

During the research for the book, I learned that the Archbishop of Canterbury, along with the rest of the hierarchy and the church itself, is subject to the monarch. That’s how Henry VIII set it up in the 1530s during the English Reformation. And the archbishop functions at the pleasure of the monarch. That the current prime minister, Keir Starmer, refused to back Justin Welby publicly was of less importance than the silence that was coming from King Charles. Welby’s announcement noted that King Charles has graciously accepted his resignation. That’s how it works. The Catholic pope tells God and the church; the Archbishop of Canterbury tells the king (or the king asks for it).

In Dancing Prophet, Michael tells Sebastian Rowland he must resign. Rowland at first refuses, until Michael, in the presence of the police, explains the evidence against the archbishop, all of which will be made public. It’s worth noting, too, that Michael went to the police as soon as he became aware of the activities of one priest, which would soon explode into a global crime. And Michael, when he speaks to the British people, will tell them that the Church of England may not survive. Righteousness trumps reputation.

Dancing Prophet was written long before the John Smyth scandal was known publicly. What I did know concerned a COE abuse scandal involving some priests; it had first surfaced in the news in 2012. For the novel, I adapted the abuse scandal that has rocked (and continues to rock) the Roman Catholic Church to the COE.

I’m not a prophet; I can’t and don’t predict the future. But I’ve learned that, when you’re doing research for a book like any of the Dancing Priest novels (“future history,” one reader called them), you pick up on issues, concerns, trends, and ideas that are being discussed. You read about past events and troubles. You learn how people, especially people in authority, respond to what they see as threats. And you know what humans naturally tend to do: wish it would all go away, ignore it, make it worse, try to contain it, or cover it up. It might work for a time, but it usually doesn’t work forever.

We forget that lesson: righteousness trumps reputation.

Related:

Can Fiction Predict the Future?

Did Dancing Prophet Become Prophetic?

Top photograph by Ruth Gledhill via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Sweet Agony of Waiting

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A publisher asks to see your full manuscript. You read it three more times, trying to eradicate all typos, missing words, unclear passages, and confusing lines. You attach it to a politely professional email, which you hope disguises what you’re experiencing in equal measure: hope, fear, and anxiety.

You hit send.

And then you wait.

Waiting may be as much or more exhausting than the writing itself, but it is a fact of life in book publishing.

To continue reading, please see my post today at the ACFW Blog. 

Photograph by David Taffett via Unsplash. Used with permission.

The Journalists’ Prayer

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St. Bride’s Church in London’s Fleet Steet is known as the “Journalists’ Church.” The church and the area around it have a long history with writers, publishing, printing, and newspapers. But it’s history – the newspapers that once occupied the buildings of Fleet Street are long gone, absorbed into other newspaper or moved to other locations.

British journalism grew up here for a simple reason: the first printing press with moveable type was brought to the area in 1500, and the printing (and later the newspaper business) grew up around it. But a church had occupied the site since about 500 A.D.; the current St. Bride’s was completely rebuilt in the late 1950s to restore what had been destroyed during the German Blitz of December 1940.

A nearby building which once housed the Sunday Telegraph.

The church has seen its fair share of famous purposes. Samuel Johnson lived across Fleet Street; John Milton at one time lived in the churchyard; Samuel Pepys was baptized here; the 18th century novelist Samuel Richardson was buried here; and Charles Dickens lived for a time in the parish (we forget that Dickens started his writing career as a reporter). 

On a recent visit to London, we visited St. Bride’s and its crypt during one of the two London Open House weekends. When it was restored, it was rebuilt with all its former Christopher Wren elegance. The church’s interior is simply beautiful. 

The crypts below the church are another story altogether. Over the centuries, they had been forgotten and buried; they were rediscovered after the German bombing. You can see part of a Roman building foundation, a small medieval chapel; and the area where hundreds of people were buried (the nameplate for Samuel Richardson’s coffin is on display). 

Placed around the church proper are various plaques, listing the names of journalists killed in World War I, World II, Iraq, and other conflicts. And many of the seats have nameplates in memory of journalists; I sat in the one bearing the name of Malcolm Muggeridge, a journalist well worth knowing about and reading.

What struck me most profoundly was a polished stone sheet bearing “The Journalists’ Prayer.” The words are attributed to St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), the patron saint of Catholic writers and journalists. While St. Bride’s directs them to journalists, the words could apply to writers in general, and more generally to anyone who works. But I read those words, and I felt the gap between them and me. The prayer is something that writers, and especially Christian writers, can aspire to.

The Journalists’ Prayer

Almighty God,
strengthen and direct, we pray,
the will of all whose work it is to write what many read,
and to speak where many listen.
May we be bold in confronting evil and injustice,
and compassionate in our understanding of human weakness,
rejecting alike the half-truth that deceives, and the slanted word that corrupts.
May the power that is ours, for good or ill,
always be used with respect and integrity;
so that when all here has been written, said, and done,
we may, unashamed, meet Thee face to face,
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Related: 

Footsteps at St. Bride’s. 

Top photo: The Journalists’ Prayer inscribed stone in St. Bride’s Church, Fleet Street. Below, the church’s famous tiered steeple of St. Bride’s, the inspiration for wedding cakes everywhere.

Footsteps at St. Bride’s

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During a recent trip to England, we took advantage of our trip coinciding with London Open House, two successive weekends where citizens and tourists alike can view many buildings usually closed to the public, or take walking tours, or get behind the scenes views of many places that are open to the public. 

One of the places we visited was St. Bride’s Church on Fleet Street, known as “the journalists’ church.” Fleet Street as the home to Britain’s big newspapers is a memory; the newspapers and the journalists moved to other parts of the city decades ago. But St. Bride’s remains, and it’s still known as the place where journalists worshipped. 

A church has stood on this spot since the late Roman / early Briton period. It gets its name from St. Bride, or Bridget, a nun who lived in the late fifth century but who may never have visited London or England.  Several church buildings have been erected on the site. The old medieval church was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666 and then rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren. It was destroyed again, on December 29, 1940, during an incendiary raid by German bombers. But it was rebuilt as close to the Wren building as possible and reopened in the late 1950s.

It’s a beautiful church. We were able to descend through 2,000 years of history to see the crypt, with its old Roman wall, the nameplates found on old coffins, and two chapels, including a small medieval chapel whitewashed and made into an intimate worship space. 

I had some to time to sit in that chapel, and I did. And it was there that I thought I could hear footsteps above and around me. 

Footsteps at St. Bride’s

I hear footsteps here, overhead
and around, echoes of Celts.
and around. echoes of Celts
and Romans, Britons and
Saxons, Vikings intent on loot
and pillage. And the builders
and architects, bricklayers
and monks, whispering of
the Irish saint inspiring it
all. Footsteps become
louder, years passing,
building and tearing down,
rebuilding and reconstructing,
and footsteps running,
accompanied by screams
and the roar of fire. And more
rebuilding, with the Architect
himself stacking the spire
like tiers of wedding cake,
standing in splendor over
the newspapers of growth
and empire so pervasive they
defined generations. I hear
more footsteps, first those
running from the bombs and
then those running to fight
the fire, but above me is ruins.
Yet new architects and
new builders return, workmen,
intent on recreating what
was once there. Newspapers
move on, but the footsteps
remain. They never go away.