I'm at an odd place, editing the latest draft of What's Best for Jane, doing research for my next book, as yet untitled. Going back and forth between the two tasks, it seems that one is infusing the other. How did that happen?
At first, it would seem logical that this cross pollination would occur, because the research is for an historical novel set in Montgomery during the decades leading up to and including the civil rights movement, and the main character in What's Best for Jane was involved in that struggle too.
But Mary McGhee is a complete, finished character with a very specific history and personality. One reason I wanted to return to this era was because I still feel connected to it, and the story of my first two novels didn't lend itself to more depth and breadth regarding that long fight. A lot of the research I did for those two books didn't find its way into the story.
Casting around for a subject that interested me enough to write about, I found that all the passion I have for that era, that place, and that struggle still burned.
So I'm doing two things at once, together, and both are helped, I hope, by the research. It happens that most of the facts, the information, the details of research don't often end up in the novel. Some are simply fact-checking, making sure there are no anachronisms. Then, a lot of work is done just to get the time right. You can't have a character storming the Bastille if she lived in the 19th century, for instance. She can't be talking on the phone before phones were common in households, or driving a particular make and model of car if it didn't exist at that point in the novel.
Fitting a fictional character into actual historical events can be tricky also. If the character is based on a real person, you risk crossing the line between fiction and history. Stealing certain acts committed by real people and pinning them on to a fictional character is dangerous, especially if you're dealing with an era such that those actual participants may still be living.
You also don't want to manufacture fictional events so that your fictional hero can be in them. Unless you're writing science fiction, I suppose.
So you pick a person whose participation was minor or overlooked, not generally known, one of the grunts instead of one of the giants.
And that's where my dilemma starts. As I am discovering, the civil rights movement was one of massive, in the trenches, local feet on the ground, action. The people we study and read about today, the giants of the movement, the leaders, were very often a few steps behind the locals who reached a point where they simply couldn't wait any longer. There certainly can be no more eloquent spokesman for the time than Dr. King, but when he showed up, there were hundreds and thousands behind him, and they had already been marching for a while when he stepped to the front of the line. Which is not to belittle his importance or his contribution. He drew national attention to local injustices, he drew federal attention, and he drew support and money and publicity, all of which were vital and necessary. He was uniquely suited, talented, and a wonderful writer and speaker. He risked his life and gave his life to the cause. But so many others did too, and they haven't had books written about them or national holidays named for them.
There's a wonderful book called Freedom's Daughters, written by Lynne Olsen, that has become my Bible. So many names, so many women who were there first, and longer, and were never known. IN many, many of those public marches, the hundreds were mostly women, for a number of reasons. Men had a lot more at risk. Men got lynched. While so many of the women suffered jail and beatings and abuse right along side everyone else, very few lost their lives. Many lost their jobs, and suffered horribly.
Mary McGhee's dilemma was that she didn't suffer. She prospered. And she felt guilty for the rest of her life, and wondered whether her contribution achieved anything at all.
