The Pitfalls of Near History

Most of my books involve near history. That means, at any given time, someone might read a book I have written who lived in or visited the place where it is set, at the time it is set, and who remembers what it meant to them. Making near history a bit of a minefield. With historical fiction, the author takes us back to a time that we know from various historical sources. But near history, well, we lived through it.

For instance, CDR Byron Cooper is stationed at Alameda Naval Air Station in Head First. The air station has since closed. But in 1972, it was the boom and the bane of life in Alameda, CA. People remember the bustle, the jets flying over, the massive gray aircraft carriers at anchor. And the view. The Air Station was a vibrant organism then, not the runways with weeds growing through them, housing developments, and shopping centers of today. For those who remember, it is my job to reflect the energy of it as they remember it. For those who don’t remember it, the job is to create an image of it as it was. The difficult part is avoiding dissonance for one set and creating a breathing organism for another.

Pay Back, the third book in the Cooper Quartet, charts the fall of Saigon, day by day. The surrender and the U.S. exodus packed an emotional wallop for the country. People remember where they were, what they were doing and how they felt. You don’t want to get it wrong. Placing characters into the events and sharing the emotion of the moment is an honor and a tightrope. Get it right. The Cooper Quartet charts the emotional journey of a Michigan military family. Consequently, Pay Back is set in Saigon, on an aircraft carrier on Yankee Station, and in Michigan. Getting the timing right across all these locations was a challenge but essential. I was dealing with near history, history people remember, some from newscasts, some from demonstrations, some from the killing field.

My book, Perfidia, takes place in Barbados, shortly after its independence from England. The population of the island consists of the descendants of blacks brought over during the slave trade, and lily-white British landed gentry. Read Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park for a frame of reference. Since then, the gene pool has been generously stirred. Yet, in 1972, when the story takes place, it was still better to be a landed white Barbadian than a black Barbadian with a folding house. In the book, one of the few remaining Barbadian plantations is at stake. Three men vie to inherit, one is a little bit Latin, another lily-white, and the third is mixed race. So, as historical fiction, it is essential that the plot address the subtle prejudices of the time. People remember.

When the story takes place, Sam Lord’s Castle is a fixture of the island. It burned down a few years after. People who visited after never saw the castle, for those who visited before it was a treat. Don’t get the par terre wrong, or the staircases, or the type of plants or the view of the ocean. You’ll hear about it.

Near history. Challenging. Although historical fiction of any sort carries its own dangers. The history we rely on was created by contemporaneous historians, revisited, and reinterpreted repeatedly by more historians, reported by the daily newspapers of the era, and defined by biographies and interpreted by encyclopedias and textbooks. Many of these sources have or had prejudices, ideas they wished to put forward, and axes to grind. Was General Bedford Forrest a tactical genius or a beast?

So, there you go. Historical fiction of any sort – near or long ago. Challenging. I had a reviewer tell me a character knew nothing about how hard women worked in the 1870s as though she had firsthand experience. She must be very old indeed. It is enough to make you write a contemporary detective series.

Nope, not for me.