Historical Fiction Represents Culture?

One person said that historical fiction doesn’t represent the culture of a place.

Then what does?

Historical fiction is fiction, but the culture of the time and place the novel is set plays a huge role. The setting becomes a character. In Under a Copper Moon, I researched the people, the town’s history, the attitudes, the food, the fashion, and the laws that dictated how a character would live and work and love.

All the bigotry, prejudices, and narrow-mindedness revealed itself just as the kindness, justice, goodwill, and caring trumped those lower, petty attitudes. It reminded me a lot of current culture – good and bad are present and celebrated by different groups.

You can read historical accounts, old newspapers, diaries and journals of the people who lived during the time. I did. But to take it a step further, to parallel what our ancestors struggled with and how they coped in their lives, to parallel that with our own requires imagination and literary license that binds the storytelling of true non-fiction.

The fun part is to look back with 20/20 vision. I could visualize the culture of Jerome in the Arizona Territory in 1894 and I could experience it today. I pulled the types of events and characters that would have led the town to its current way of life.

The key is reading historical fiction with an adult view and bringing your own experiences to the story along with the recent history of the setting. From my past in corporate instructional design, I realize that adults bring experience with them to everything they do (unlike children who seem to need more details and repetitious, routine, rote learning) and this allows an author to use a phrase that brings more to the table than the mere words. For example: “those people.” An adult sees the words and knows it is something uttered by a person who sees himself as superior to another group of people, usually by race, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical abilities, etc.

Novels embrace you and your willingness to ‘walk in the shoes’ of another. Some readers find this difficult and remain outside the characters and plot while others immerse themselves and their lives in the fiction with the added reward of seeing a different place and time in the context of their own lives.

Historical fiction gathers up the culture of a certain place and time and stirs it with our own. It represents the culture of a place more than facts and dates; it adds the spice of knowing the future and framing the past to help illustrate how we made it here in one piece.

Dolly’s influence

I found an old album I had back in high school: Dolly Parton's "9 to 5". As I listen to it now, some of the songs have the style of the times, but others...others that stuck with me are classic stories with timeless arrangements.

"Dark as a Dungeon" hit home since I grew up in Southwest Virginia near the coal fields. I remember liking the song and the mood and the story it told. I can see it in Under a Copper Moon. Maybe that is why the ghost town of Jerome, Arizona had a pull on me.

Thanks Dolly.

Elliot Spitzer calls on Miss Dupre

With all the news about now-former Governor Elliot Spitzer (Client-9), Ashley Dupre (“Kristen”), and their brief working relationship… I thought about my research for UNDER A COPPER MOON which deals with the “parlor houses” of the Wild West.

Now, Onalee’s girls did not get $4300 for entertaining the gentlemen. In fact, prostitutes of a hundred years ago did well to survive the beatings, drugs, alcohol, and diseases which I think is much like the women who work the lower levels of the profession today. Although Ashley Dupre is being portrayed as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, most working women don’t have the luxury and “glamour” – although I can’t see much glamour in being intimate with a stranger, wealthy or not.

The main difference between now and the late 1800s, is that few opportunities existed for a woman in those times. If you weren’t married, you had to provide for yourself in a limited job market. Today, I hope that the world is open to women and that prostitution isn’t the preferred career choice – no matter if the going rate is $4300.

In the late 1800s, there were tiers of prostitutes in the mining towns and cattle towns (the place where lonely men made money). That hierarchy was something like:

1. parlor houses
2. brothels
3. dance halls / saloons
4. hurdy-gurdy houses
5. cribs / street walkers

Parlor houses had an air of discretion, class, and real entertainment. The men were regulars and enjoyed the company of women as much as the sex. In the novel, Inez has no job or money and is taken in by Onalee (the Madame) and the parlor house ladies. Those women become her family, but the lack of opportunity for them nags at Inez as she tries to make their lives better.

Did Ashley Dupre have no other options?

Was Elliot Spitzer looking for more than sex?

I don’t know.

But everyone from Dr. Laura (the media whore) to Dr. Phil (“How’s that working for ya?”)…And anyone else who puts a “Dr.” in front of their first name weighs in on the reasons; I just hope that things have changed for women in the past hundred years.

“Dr.” Greg

Video to promote a book?

I just uploaded a video book trailer for my new book Under a Copper Moon. I had created one for Devil's Bridge last March, so I thought I should do one for the new novel too.

Now, I'm not sure how this trend got started. But it's an interesting concept to create a video for a book. I guess we're all so visually stimulated that books should be like movies when it comes to getting the word out.

The process is great fun. I get to act like a movie producer and casting director and screenwriter. Of course it's hard to find images to tie directly into what I had in mind as I wrote the book, but the trailer is a fair representation of what the book has to offer.

Do you think a video is helpful when you're looking for a book?