A Benefit to Blogging and How a Book is Born

Last week my friend and fellow NC blogger, Joan Edwards, interviewed me on her blog. She asked questions about writing Half-Truths including how my blog has helped me develop my writing skills. This is what told her:

My blog has helped me in two ways. I read and reviewed lots of mentor texts. Each review has taught me to analyze what makes a novel stand out. I also was able to journal my progress with Half-Truths including reviewing books about the Black experience. The books were crucial to making Half-Truths authentic and the online journal helped me answer your questions!

Yesterday as I was working on my next book, Unbroken Heat (working title) I thought how keeping track of my progress with Half-Truths was helpful to me as well as to anyone who wanted to know the book's backstory. So, here I am with this week's blog post, to tell you about Unbroken and my love for glass.

Over 25 years ago I walked into a glass bead shop and I was hooked. I couldn't believe the intricate, gorgeous beads were glass! I told the owner I wanted to write about her and she replied, "Don't write about me. I'm going to introduce you to people who are bigger than me--you're going to meet some North Carolina glass artists."

As a result of her introductions, I watched hot, molten glass transform into works of art and wrote several articles. I won two awards from Highlights Magazine for my article, "Paul Stankard's Paperweight Magic;" and signed a contract for Discover Glass about the history, art, and science of glass. I thought I was set to become the expert on glass for kids. But the publisher went belly-up and I was left with boxes full of drafts, research notes, and photographs. 

Soon after that, I started Half-Truths. I promised myself that any book I wrote going forward would include glass. I couldn't waste all my research! So, when I created my protagonist's backstory,  her grandfather's (Andrew Dinsmore) history included working in a glass factory when he was a boy.

Meanwhile, somewhere along the line, I purchased KIDS AT WORK: LEWIS HINE AND THE CRUSADE AGAINST CHILD LABOR.

Pictures like these caught my attention:

https://www.loc.gov/resource/nclc.01154/

https://www.loc.gov/item/2018676573/

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lewis_Hine,_Glass_works,_midnight,_Indiana,_1908.jpg

Who were these boys? How did they end up working in glass factories as young as 10 years old? What were their stories? Those images and questions stuck with me. 

I started researching. I thought I wanted to write about child labor in the glass industry, but as Harold Underdown reminded me when I began Half-Truths, that was only the setting. That wasn't the story itself. 

I started studying a book that Paul Stankard gave me years ago, 

and I watched YouTube videos that Wheaton Arts produced. 

I knew this was Andrew Dinsmore's story and that he had to go to work as a young teen--but I didn't know much else. Slowly, Andrew's life in a New Jersey glass factory in 1893 is getting fleshed out. I'm discovering what he wants and who or what will keep him from his goals. 

As I read about New Jersey's glass industry, I realized that besides the failed attempt at producing glassware in Jamestown, Va., the first successful glass factories were in colonial New Jersey.  Suddenly I had another story besides Andrew's--I had the story of a young indentured servant from England who landed in Philadelphia and must work off his debt in a glass factory in South Jersey. 

I had just finished reading The Blackbird Girls and was intrigued by Anne Blankman's use of two different timelines and multiple points of view. Could I do that with Unbroken? If so, what was the other timeline and how could I connect the two stories? Here's the pitch I came up with:

At the turn of the 20^th century, a young factory worker is surrounded by deafening noise, blisteringly hot glass, and mind-numbing exhaustion. There is no end in sight until he finds mysterious notes from a boy who lived this life 100 years earlier.  

And now, I can begin a new page on my blog. And when Joan Edwards interviews me about Out of the Flame--I'll know exactly how it all began. 

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Please go to Greg Pattridge's Marvelous Middle Grade Monday blog for more middle-grade book reviews and news.

 

Puritan Girl, Mohawk Girl-- An Audio Book Review and Giveaway

Congratulations to Nancy Frederick who won SHE STARTED IT ALL on last week's blog.

REVIEW

PURITAN GIRL, MOHAWK GIRL (Amulet Books, 2017) written by John Demos and narrated by Christina Moore, is based on the true story of Eunice Kanenstewnhawi Williams who was kidnapped (along with her family) by the Mohawks when she was seven and taken to Canada. The attack on Deerfield Village, where she lived with her Puritan minister father, John Williams, her mother Eunice, and siblings, was in 1704. This attack was part of a series of raids and conflicts between the English and French as part of Queen Anne's War. As Demos notes in the prologue, different Native Americans tribes allied with both countries. 

Like Sandra Warren whose book, SHE STARTED IT ALL, was reviewed last week, John Demos wrote this work of fiction after researching and writing a nonfiction account The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America which was published in 1995. 

I presume that the author used John Williams book, The Redeemed Captive, his account of being kidnapped and returned to Massachusetts. (The hard copy of PURITAN GIRL, MOHAWK GIRL includes substantial author's notes on the historical documentation along with details filled in by the author's knowledge of French Canadian, Puritan, and Mohawk customs and beliefs. Unfortunately these were not a part of the audio recording.)

The story graphically depicts Eunice's capture, the death of her mother and younger sister, and her abduction by the Mohawks. She is adopted by a woman who has lost her daughter. One year later, John Williams travels to try and get her back but is rebuffed by the chief who says that she belongs to them now. He leaves with the image of Eunice begging him to take her back home. 

Eunice receives a Mohawk name (Waongote), learns the language, and the history of the tribe. Two years later when a trader comes to the village and tries to convince her to come home, she has no desire to leave her Mohawk family and has totally forgotten the English language. When her father hears of this, it is a source of great grief and sorrow and he never truly gives up hope that she will return. 

When she is a teen of marriageable age, she receives the name Kanenstewnhawi and marries a Mohawk man who has already converted to Catholicism. The priests didn’t want to marry them in the church knowing how her father and the English will be upset that she was married as a Catholic Mohawk. They also didn’t want them to live in sin, so they're faced with a political and spiritual dilemma. The couple ends up getting married in a very small ceremony in the church. The priests want to keep it secret, but news gets back to her father through traders. Reverand Williams was shocked. How could she become Catholic and marry a savage?

As an adult, memories finally return to her of her former life and the raid; she blames her father for her mother's death. Long after her father dies, she returns to Massachusetts to see her brothers. Despite her family's prayers and petitions, she remains a Mohawk until her death. She is interested in receiving her share of her father's estate but is unable to receive it as a Mohawk. 

John Demos certainly dug deep to write this story, but the book reads more like an historical narrative than a work of fiction. The reader will gain a lot of information about the French Mohawks as well as the conflict between the Puritans and Catholics during colonial times, but the narrator tells the story, rather than Eunice herself. This distant storytelling technique make the novel less immersive. Other book reviewers mention this problem likening it more to a biography than a work of historical fiction.

Although I can't dispute Mr. Demos's research, it feels like a bit of a stretch that Eunice is so immersed in the Mohawk culture that she totally forgets who she is. She is Caucasian with light hair and obviously looked very different than the people around her. Wouldn’t she have questioned that?  

These concerns aside, I still think PURITAN GIRL, MOHAWK GIRL would be an interesting curriculum resource that will spark considerable classroom discussion.

Here is a snippet from the book, courtesy of Recorded Books. 

GIVEAWAY

If you are interested in entering this giveaway, please leave me a comment along with your email address if you are new to this blog. I will be giving it away in mid-October in conjunction with the fall issue of TALKING STORY on Colonial America. 

Indigo Girl: An Audio CD Review and Giveaway

Congratulations to Connie Saunders for winning REFUGEE. I haven't added it up, but I believe Connie gets the prize for winning the most books off my blog. Her secret? She always shares my posts on Twitter!

I love finding a book which make a setting so real to me that I look it up on a map. Couple that with a Southern young woman who impacted history and a book written with captivating, beautiful language, and I’m hooked. (Caveat: I listened to this as an audio book courtesy of Blackstone Audio so quotations might not be 100% accurate.)

REVIEW

INDIGO GIRL by Natasha Boyd is the story of 16-year-old Eliza Lucas, who lived outside of Charles Town (Charleston), SC in 1739. A British subject, she spent her formative years in Antigua where her father was governor. He moved his family to South Carolina only to decide that he needed to return to Antigua to ensure his political career. With her older brother studying in England, Eliza’s father turns over the responsibility of running the planation to Eliza. 

Eliza is smart, unconventional, and botanical. During a time when young women were groomed for marriage and nothing else, Eliza refuses to be boxed into conventional expectations. Despite her mother’s disapproval and the ridicule of her father’s overseer and neighboring planters, Eliza is determined to not allow her father’s debts to ruin their family.

As the manager of her father’s three tracts of land, Eliza is also in charge of their slaves. Eliza is predisposed not to treat them harshly but her understanding of their situation matures. Early in the book she thanks Quash, the black man who oversees the slaves. Then she thinks, “It's odd to be thanking someone who has no choice."

She dreams of being able to afford to pay her workers rather than be dependent on enslaved workers. This radical thought comes when a suitor confesses he wants to enslave Native Americans to work for him; she realizes he could never be her life companion. She feels small and powerless when her closest friend says Negroes are uneducated savages. 

Her best friend in Antigua was a Negro named Ben. She taught him how to read and he passed along a love for plants that he learned from his grandmother. When Eliza decides that the plantation needs a cash crop to keep the family afloat, she picks indigo, a plant she saw in Antigua. But growing, harvesting, and converting indigo into a dye is a complicated process that no other coastal South Carolina planter has had success with. Eliza’s first crops fail and she desperately needs help. She knows Ben has the expertise she needs, but how is she going to find him?

Her father sends her a man to help her and to her shock and surprise, the man brings Ben too. Now a grown man with the promise of freedom dangling over his head, Ben remains aloof from Eliza. She’s crushed, confused, and stuck between childhood and womanhood. She wants to run back to be a child with her best friend. But she can’t. He is an educated slave who longs to be free.

Ben challenges her in ways no one else can. “Why have you not taught your slaves to read and write?”  “Why do you want indigo?” She’s angered at the blurring between master and slave and then realizes that if her indigo is successful it will be because of Ben’s knowledge. She’ll get rich but he’ll get nothing—not even his longed for freedom. Along the way Eliza learns of The Negro Act but faced with Ben’s challenge, she decides to teach the slave children how to read the Bible—something even her mother can’t object to.

Eliza’s dilemmas drive the book. By managing her father’s estate, she is seen as not very marriage-able. Without a husband, she feels as if she is chattel like her slaves. She bemoans her rashness when she speaks her mind to men--like to her father’s employee who tells her she is too intelligent to be a woman. Yet her need to ensure the indigo’s success to secure her family’s financial future and be a source of revenue for her if she never marries--as well as the nation’s need for a stable export--propels her forward. 

A comprehensive author’s note shows the author’s inspiration for this well-researched book, including what was fact and what was fiction. Boyd’s desire to bring this forgotten pre-revolutionary figure to light is admirable and makes this a great book for both teens and adults. Beautifully narrated by Saskia Maaleveld, this audio book will captivate your imagination and keep you company for many hours. 

GIVEAWAY

Leave me a comment by October 5 for a chance to win this audio book. Share this on social media or start following my blog and I'll put your name in twice--just make sure you tell me what you do or tag me. You can find me on Twitter here, and on Facebook here. PLEASE leave your email address if I don't have it!

Author Signing and Article

Celebrate Indigo Girl's book birthday tomorrow by meeting Natasha at Fiction Addiction in Greenville, SC on October 5. Check out Natasha's schedule for a signing near you--including Charlotte, Savannah, and Charleston.

And one last tidbit: Natasha writes about the compulsion she felt to write Indigo Girl here.