writing

Last week, I sat with seven or eight members of a local St. Louis book club. I was there at their invitation to discuss my historical novel Brookhaven, which they’d chosen for their monthly reading. I was there to talk about the book and answer their questions.

The hostess was more than knowledgeable about the Civil War, having an ancestor who served on the Union side. She even had his picture and other memorabilia. Her husband had an ancestor who published Origins of the Late War in 1866.

As usually happens when you talk with engaged and knowledgeable readers – really engaged readers – you’re the one who comes come away with a new understanding of your own work. 

What was the inspiration for the story?

My family history, supposedly passed down from my great-grandfather Samuel Young, who was a Civil War veteran. The family story was that he was too young at the start of the war, so he became a messenger boy. At the end of the war, he had to make his way home on foot from the Eastern Theater to southern Mississippi. 

What a great story!

As I discovered in the middle of writing Brookhaven, it was also untrue. Completely. I had to piece together the real story from U.S. Census records, family memories from another branch, old military records, and the family Bible. The received story was so untrue that I suspect someone was pulling someone’s leg, or the story was artfully embroidered by people who weren’t there. My father, for example, said that we came from a long line of shopkeepers who never owned slaves. The census records tell a very different story. We came from a long line of farmers who had indeed owned slaves.

Any other inspirations for the book?

In early 2022, my wife found a reference to a book conserver in St. Louis, and I turned over the family Bible to repair what could be repaired. He did a great job; he also found a lock of auburn hair in the Bible. Given that all the recorded family records were in my great-grandfather’s hand, the lock likely belonged to my great-grandmother Octavia. She died at 44; my great-grandfather never remarried even though he was 43 when she died and lived until he was 75. That lock of hair and his remaining a widower told me there was a love story here.

How long did it take to write Brookhaven?

The writing itself took about eight months, but it wasn’t a solid eight months of non-stop writing. The research took considerably longer; I started reading about the Civil War in 2016, I think inspired by the red-blue divide that was just beginning to rage in contemporary America. The emotions aroused today are not unlike the emotions aroused prior to the Civil War, although the reasons were and are considerably different.

And the story is not just about the Civil War, of course, because it’s actually set in 1915, fifty years after the war ended. So that required two research efforts, like the clothes men and women wore, the kinds of automobiles driven, what you would see at county fairs, whether indoor plumbing was available in small-town Mississippi, and a whole lot more. One historical fact I learned that becomes a small part in the story was that Brookhaven in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries had a large Jewish population, unusual for a small Southern town.

How do you write? Do you have a set time each day?

My wife will tell you that I’m always writing, even when I’m not. Brookhaven was written in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings. The manuscript came with me when we spent three weeks in London in 2023, and I worked on it there and on the plane both ways as well. When I’m not sitting in front of the desktop or laptop, I’m often writing and rewriting in my head, like when I take long walks.

Do you write from an outline or plan?

No. I write from an idea in my head, but not from an outline. There’s a phrase for it, “writing into the dark.” When I start writing, I don’t know how the story is going to end. One of the main characters, the young reporter Elizabeth Putnam, was a relatively late addition to the story, because I kept stumbling over the need for a reason that the story was being told 50 years later. It was another main character, Sam McClure the Civil War veteran, who looked me in the eye one day and said, “You know, you really need a reason for this story being told in 1915.” Writing into the dark mean you learn to trust your characters. I know it sounds bizarre, but that’s how I write.

Related:

Research for a Novel Upended a Family Legend.

7 Tips for the Novice Historical Writer – Learned the Hard Way.

How My Novel Originated in the Family Bible.

Relearning Civil War History to Write a Novel.

10 Great Resources for Teaching the Civil War.

Top photograph: The Brookhaven, Miss., train station about 1915.