Dear Reader: My second novel—a coming-of-age story set in the 1950s, called Izzy Strikes Gold!—will be released on Wednesday, July 24. Publishing a book requires many preparations on the part of publisher and author, who ideally work together hand in hand. Fortunately, I have an excellent publisher, Kira Henschel of Three Towers Press.
Be that as it may, the demands of publishing and selling a book do not exempt an author from Step 2 of my widely-heralded “Six Simple Steps to Literary Lionhood,” namely: WRITE.
The simplest, most accurate definition of a writer is “one who writes.”
Publicizing is not writing, even though it involves some sales-oriented writing. Selling is not writing, even though trhe product you are selling is what you have written.
Two or three months ago I was purring along like a literary machine, cranking out pages and chapters of first draft on my work-in-progress, a World War II novel. But as Izzy’s publication date drew near, the detailed plans for getting this already-written book into print and onto buyers’ bookshelves began to suck up all my time and attention.
It was a relief to take time out last week for coffee with my friend Mary Behan—the wonderful author of Abbey Girls,A Measured Thread, and Finding Isobel. (Rush right out and buy them, or put them on hold at your favorite lending library. You’ll be glad you did!)
Mary reminded me that we are, first of all, writers. She mentioned a writers’ book called What About the Baby—Some Thoughts on Fiction, by Alice McDermott, a National Book Award Winner. So I rushed right out and got it. So far I’m about two-thirds of the way through.
Alice McDermott says thoughtful, even profound, things about the art of writing fiction. Her main message is that you have to get deeply and passionately into writing down those words of which your story is made. You may do other wonderful things—research, editing, or just thinking—but writing is what gets you where you want to go. It brings to life the wonder and delight of a story well told—a story you didn’t even know you had in you.
That’s really why we write, after all. For that thrill.
I was so inspired I picked up my laptop keyboard and rapped out a new chapter of my WWII novel, which I have duly sent to the members of my two writing critique groups, who will give me feedback this week.
It’s good to be back in the saddle again, pardner.
By the way—if you cannot attend the fabulous Launch Party for the book Izzy Strikes Gold!, may I cordially invite you to follow along on the livestream via Crowdcast, at this link. If you find you can attend, there may still be a ticket or two left.
It’s time to reveal the cover of IZZY STRIKES GOLD!, my new middle-grade novel from Three Towers Press. In the near future, I’ll post the link for pre-publication orders, but for the moment, just revel in this beautiful cover, please!
I think sensational cover artist KINGA MARTIN got it just right.
IZZY, the twelve-year-old hero of the book, is a real boy, battling real problems in a realistically rendered 1957 setting. But Kinga’s cartoon-like rendering universalizes him, makes him into an Everykid, while perfectly capturing his innocence and venturesome spirit. And all in a brilliant woodland frame that shows the half-magical woods where Izzy’s tormenting secret lives.
MATT FIEDLER, fifth-grade teacher at Winnequah School, pointed out the style of illustration is reminiscent of animé, an art form “the kids really like.” I know already that the kids in Matt’s 2022-2023 class like the book itself, because I read it to them in installments last year.
But I didn’t have a juvenile audience in mind when I wrote it. I was thinking EVERYBODY could identify with Izzy, a kid trying to balance the child and adult worlds. I know old folks of my generation will enjoy this trip back to the Fifties. If they read the book to their grandchildren, who knows what illuminating conversations might ensue?
IZZY STRIKES GOLD! launches July 24. It will be available from Amazon, Three Towers Press, or your favorite local bookstore.
As an old man, it’s easy to see I’ve had a wonderful life, filled with joy, love, and satisfaction.
At age twelve, however, things were not that rosy. Happiness sometimes seemed out of reach.
Casting a fond eye back on the 1950s, I have written a little book about a twelve-year-old boy and his hopes.
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His name is Izzy Mahler.
A secret spring: In the New England Woods (1855–65), oil on canvas, by Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826-1900), Public Domain.
Izzy lives in Plumb—an ordinary town sprinkled with a few magical places, like Patch Pagelkopf’s basement . . . the Public Library . . . and the dark, jungly Bottoms, where lustrous minerals lurk in a secret spring of water, waiting to be discovered.
Izzy’s great hope is to be one of the gang, not stand out as the youngest and smallest of his classmates. Fifty-one percent of his brain teems with schemes to fit in, while another fifty-one percent struggles to keep his family together. At times it seems his brain must burst.
Mom and Dad, caught in the grim world of adulthood, act like people from a strange planet. Izzy’s favorite grandpa languishes in a far-away hospital. And Izzy must keep his sister, Christine, from learning how dire things are—because she’s, like, a lttle kid, you know.
Extra money might ease the strains on his family, but Izzy has made a pact with his blood brother Collum to keep mum about the gold from the secret spring.
Everything comes crashing down when the Russians launch Sputnik, the first artificial satellite. It’s a vile trick to cheat the U.S. of its proper place in Space and make aspiring spacemen Izzy and Collum live out their lives as grim adults on Planet Earth.
What can a twelve-year-old do, in 1957?
You’ll have to read the book to find out.
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An eleven-year-old boy in 1956.
Izzy Strikes Gold!is a middle-grade novel. Boys and girls from ten to fourteen will identify with Izzy and his friends—steadfast Collum, bellicose Lyle Haycock, enchanting Irma Ruger, and the mystifying Mutt-mutt Corner.
But their grandparents—folks of an age with Your New Favorite Writer—will also enjoy this serio-comic journey into the rosy land of the past.
Publication is scheduled for July. We’ll have a big launch party. If you’re in or near Madison, Wisconsin, please come help us launch this lovely book. If not, tune in by Zoom.
In the weeks leading up to publication, you’ll be able to order Izzy Strikes Gold! at a special discount. I’ll let you know when pre-orders open.
Thanks for your constant support in these endeavors.
“Reflections” is the name of this blog. It is also the name of Your New Favorite Writer’s “author newsletter.”
In fact, the two are one. If you got here by surfing the Web and you found this site, you are reading my blog. If it arrived in your inbox, because you signed up, then you are reading my newsletter. It is the same content, only delivered by email, so you don’t have to search the Internet to find it.
If you have not yet done so, please sign up for the newsletter version, using the “Share My Journey” box at right. You’ll be glad you did.
The tagline of “Reflections”—whether you call it a blog or a newsletter—is “Seeking fresh meanings in our common past.” That’s all I write about.
In the pages of the blog/newsletter, this search for the links between present and past ranges over a vast field of ruminations. But every post has something to do with present and past. I like to think of “Reflections” as “Miscellany with a purpose.”
That purpose, simply put, is to offer us all, on a weekly basis, a fresh dash of historical perspective, from any source.
This being a newsletter and all, I really ought to share some news. Mostly what I share is random thoughts and woolgatherings. I do hope you enjoy them, but it’s necessary from time to time to toot my own horn—self-promotion being a solemn duty of the Literary Lion. That’s what I mean by “sharing news.”
You may recall that in August 2022 I published—or rather, DX Varos Publishing, Inc., published—my first novel, a compelling work of historical fiction calledPrice of Passage: A Tale of Immigration and Liberation. Since then I’ve been living the life of a published author.
It’s a life filled with glory in lieu of monetary rewards. I call it “living the dream.”
A kink appeared in the dream last July when Dan Willis, the guiding genius behind DX Varos Publishing, died unexpectedly. Without Dan’s sacrificial levels of one-man input, the corporation is failing to thrive. I have been forced to reclaim my rights in Price of Passage, meaning DX Varos will no longer publish it. There is hope, however, that a new edition will be published.
And What of Izzy?
You may also recall that I wrote a middle-grades novel, Izzy Strikes Gold!, about a twelve-year-old boy in 1957. It won the hearts of my grandson’s fifth-grade classmates and teachers when I read it aloud to them over several weeks last year. I am proud to announce, if I have not already done so, that HenschelHAUS Publishing, Inc., of Milwaukee, will publishIzzy Strikes Gold!later this year. When the publication date is set and pre-orders can be taken, I’ll announce that here.
It happens that HenschelHAUS is also interested in republishing Price of Passage, with a new cover and new subtitle. I think it’s okay to mention that here, although a contract has not yet been inked.
Work in Progress
“So, New Favorite Author, what have you done for us lately?”
I’m working hammer and tongs on a new adult historical novel about two brothers who are at odds with each other when World War II separates them. It’s the most ambitious project I’ve tackled yet, and it’s going slowly. But I’m deeply wrapped up in it. When it is finished, it will have been worth the wait.
The reason the writing goes slowly is that my brain works slowly. That’s all there is to it.
The advice of many authors is, “When writing your first draft, just write flat out. Get it down on paper as fast as you can. Don’t stop to fix anything, you can do that later.”
That’s all right for them, but I’m me.
Having written a couple of good novels, I know my process and how it works. Writing a first draft, I often follow my instincts down a blind alley. I paint myself into corners. I set up situations I cannot plot my way out of. As soon as I get a glimmer that I’m doing that, I need—absolutely need, Dear Reader—to go back to where I went wrong and find a new angle of attack. This is an essential part of the process.
Usually what saves me is research. I learn something completely unexpected while researching to verify particulars of the plot. For example, does such-and-such work in 1937?
U.S.S. Colorado, 1932.
I found out that when one of my two heroes in the new book, a Naval ROTC cadet, took a summer training cruise on the battleship Colorado, he would have unexpectedly been called to take part in the wide-ranging search for the lost aviator Amelia Earhart.
Amelia Earhart in 1937. Public Domain.
Amelia is still lost; but it excites me to find real facts of that kind that my story can tie into. It inspires me to invent new plot points. Nuggets of historical reality give me little pegs on which to hang a compelling story.
But working everything out, and narrating it in the right direction and at the right pace, takes a lot of time and effort.
So stay tuned, Gentle Reader. My entire career as a Literary Lion is a work in progress. You can’t know how glad I am to have you along for the ride.
To be filed under “Further Adventures of a Literary Lion”:
Your New Favorite Writer is pleased to announce that his middle grade novel,
IZZY STRIKES GOLD!,
will be published in 2024 by independent publisher HenschelHAUS, Milwaukee.
TA-DA!! Huzzah!! Thank you very much.
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AND HOW DID THIS GREAT BLESSING COME TO PASS?
Here’s a recap:
When I retired from my retirement job in 2016 to devote myself to writing, I did not know exactly what I would write about. But I figured whatever touched the emotional core of my being would be a good place to start.
That sent me back to my childhood. Specifically, to my grade-school years in Streator, Illinois, a prairie town of fewer than twenty thousand souls. The era was the 1950s.
Yes, Gentle Reader, those 1950s. The famous Fifties. The Fabulous Fifties. Which were not always completely fabulous, in case you didn’t know.
But here’s the thing: Life, by itself, does not make good art. If I wrote a simple recollection, you would find nothing remarkable or interesting about it. Indeed, when I look back on my actual childhood, no meaning or theme can be divined.
Yet it draws forth a strong emotion, a yearning to revisit those moments and find something . . . momentous. That’s why I write fiction. Perhaps I can touch the core truth of life by wrapping it in pretense.
So I made up a juvenile character, Izzy Mahler, a young boy in a small town in the 1950s, beset by bullying schoolmates, mystifying grownups, and a drive to reconcile conflicting events. Izzy’s experiences are my own, but rearranged in the hope they will add up to something.
I wrote a short story, “Nickel and Dime,” that links a six-year-old Izzy with two separate memories—being shaken down by bullies, and buying a candy novelty on credit. The tale had humor and nostalgia, and The Saturday Evening Post featured it on their website May 27, 2016.
And I hit the trifecta with a slightly deeper story, “The Lion’s Den,” about Izzy, still age seven, and his family tree. This piece won honorable mention in The Great American Fiction Contest and was published in its annual contest anthology.
There was more yet to say about Izzy. I thought there might be a coming-of-age novel buried somewhere in Izzy’s experience. I wanted to write it but didn’t quite know how.
After most of the writing was done on Price of Passage, and while engaged in a two-year struggle to get it published, I doubled back and started to work on Izzy’s coming of age.
This book would be a bit stiffer in content than the innocent childhood tales picked up by The Saturday Evening Post. It would focus on an older Izzy, in the momentous year when he was twelve.
Alluring and enigmatic Irma Ruger plays a part in the story, and bullies from earlier Izzy stories also appear, as well as a couple of new bullies. This time around, Izzy is mired in a family drama with serious dimensions. But there is also humor and a huge dose of authentic Fifties nostalgia.
You will enjoy the read, and so will your grandchildren.
When I thought the book was finished, I did the same thing I had done when I thought Price of Passage was finished. I took it to Christine DeSmet.
Christine DeSmet
In the most respectful and encouraging way, she took it apart—chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, line by line—and helped me see what was working and what was not. We found enough needed improvements to make the book five hundred percent better than it had been.
Nobody can do this like Christine. She has a gift and a calling.
The next step was to expose it to the target audience. Though written for ALL readers, Izzy Stirkes Gold! will be classified as a middle grade novel, merely so the booksellers know what shelf to put it on! It’s unlikely the book will appear on many bookstore shelves. Most of its sales will be online or direct from author to reader at book fairs and craft shows. But the need to categorize persists.
In the publishing world, if your protagonist is twelve years old, you have written a middle grade novel. It’s that simple. Many such books provide enjoyment and edification to full-grown adults, but no matter; they are still middle grade books.
I wanted to see how Izzy would do with its nominal target audience, so I contacted my grandson’s fifth-grade teacher, Matt Fiedler, and asked if I could introduce Izzy Strikes Gold! to his students. To my delight, he invited me to visit two or three afternoons a week and read the whole book aloud to his class, a half-hour at a time.
That experience alone was worth the whole effort. I found out what eager learners those kids are, and how they identified with a boy much like them but living in The World of Sixty-Five Years Ago. We had a fabulous time, and they affirmed for me that Izzy Strikes Gold! brings the reader some of the same longings and frustrations I knew as a boy.
By then I had begun a wide-ranging search for an agent or publisher to help me make the manuscript into a book.
A few weeks ago, I began conversations with Kira Henschel, a very experienced publisher with a catalog of books by wonderful authors.
As a result, I am now to be one of the wonderful authors in her catalog. This blessed event will occur about halfway through 2024.
Don’t worry, Dear Reader; I’ll keep you informed.
When the book comes out, do yourself and your grandkids a big favor: Buy it!
I wrote a story called “Encounters With Monsters.” It was about interactions with human beings, from the viewpoint of a migratory Canada goose. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure that a goose on a golf course could see people as monsters.
The literary magazines have not yet beaten down my door for the opportunity to print this story. Since many people will never see a story told by an animal as adult fare, I think I’ll change my pitch and sell it as the text of a picture book for young readers.
Meanwhile, I’ve started thinking I should write another one—definitely for adults—called “Encounters With Entities.”
Here is one such encounter:
Interpol on Speed Dial
A few years ago we went to Italy with our friends Bill and Marsha. We rented a car in Florence. My name was on the contract, but Bill did most of the driving, because—well, Bill likes to drive . . . even in Italy!
After a splendid week driving around Tuscany, we needed to return the car to the downtown agency where we had rented it. Florence, like many medieval towns in Italy, is old and confusing. It is a Rubik’s cube of one-way streets. If you rent a car in the center of town and manage to escape to the countryside, that does not guarantee you will ever solve the puzzle of getting back to the same place. The streets are all different, like the staircases at Hogwarts.
Bill turned into a street by a large hotel. It seemed to lead the right way but turned out to be a dead end. Bystanders waved at us sternly to turn around, which we did. As we exited that cul-de-sac, I spotted a sign in English: “PRIVATE ENTRANCE. HOTEL WATSAMATTAYOU GUESTS ONLY.”
Somehow, we reached the darkest heart of Florence, returned the car, and went on our way.
FIVE MONTHS LATER comes a letter from the European Union. Inside the officious-looking envelope there’s a traffic ticket in the amount of €93.50, for “driving in unauthorised zone.” Ransacking my brain, I remembered the dead-end street beside the hotel. We had committed not just a faux pas but an actual Eurocrime.
They must have had a camera snapping the plate of every car in that street. They must have had a computer programmed to match each plate with those of legitimate hotel guests. Their program must have had a subroutine that traced the plate to the rental agency and found my name and home address in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.
And here’s the kicker: When the jury of computers had weighed the evidence and found me guilty, my punishment was too important to come from Florence city hall or the local polizi or even carabinieri headquarters.
No. The computer forwarded our case to Geneva so some obscure office of the European Union, in all its majesty, could issue my ticket.
In those days the euro was worth a third more than the dollar. In the five months (did I mention FIVE MONTHS??) since we did the crime, the exchange rate had tanked further. So that €93.50 came to well over a hundred clams.
We shared the joy with Bill and Marsha, our unindicted co-conspirators. We were all tempted to shred the ticket and forget it. After all, the long arms of Jean-Claude von Shakedown couldn’t reach us on U.S. territory.
BUT . . . we might want to visit Europe in the future. Imagine being turned back at Amsterdam passport control because the One Great Eurocomputer choked on an unpaid trafic violation.
As William Shakespeare said, though in a slightly different context, “Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”
Bill and Marsha chipped in their half, we sent the required Euros to Geneva, and as a result we are still welcome in Europe.
Valued customers, no doubt.
Dear and Gracious Reader, if it can happen to us, it can happen to you. Maybe it already has.
Alternative History
Now picture, if you will, the same incident happening twenty years earlier—before Italy joined Europe and before computers gobbled up all continents.
Italian cop in Florence. Photo by Xeph, licensed under CC-BY-3.0.
Way back then, that same street might have already been blocked off to “unauthorised” traffic— for big hotels have ways to make their voices heard in heavily-touristed cities. But in those halcyon days, enforcement might have been on the honor system; or, more likely, it might have been entrusted to a red-faced little man in a comic opera uniform. He would have lunged into our misguided path, waving a white-gloved hand and blowing his whistle.
He would have approached the driver’s side and addressed us in rapid Florentine. Bill and I would have shrugged, held up our hands, and chanted “No parlo italiano!” The little man in cape and shako would have then repeated the same phrases at twice the volume. We would have shrugged, gestured, and chanted operatically. He would have made obscene hand signs, which we would not have understood because they were in Italian.
We would have ended the episode by driving away unscotched.
Case closed.
Just possibly, we might have been roused in our hotel at two a.m. by a carabinieri rifle squad. But even then (here comes my point, Reader, in case you have lost track) even then, there would have been a person—a brigadiere perhaps, or a maresciallo—whom we could have addressed. One might have pleaded or even begged. Maybe one could have paid a sort of fine on the spot—perhaps a thousand lire for each member of the squad. But there’s no way a few thousand lire would have added up to more than a sawbuck.
The expense incurred twenty years later, doing things à la européenne, came from the cost of all those computers and all that bureaucracy. If you think Italian bureaucrats are bad, multiply them by every signatory to the Schengen accords. Translations alone must cost a fortune.
But when a total robot citation arrives from a major world government, five months after the foul deed, without the shred of a claim that any human ever witnessed the crime, or cared—what are you gonna do?
You can’t fight city hall if there’s no city hall to fight.
And that’s only one example.
It’s Everywhere! It’s Everywhere!
Thesis: Life is now more a matter of interfacing with entities, and less a matter of dealing with people.
Big Joe Williams sings the blues, 1971. Photo by Patrick Denoréaz, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
Sometimes I wish I were a musician. If I were a musician, I could write and perform something like this:
Mmm . . . I got those old Interacting-with-Entities Blues,
Oh, yeah, I just got to tell you this news—
There’s no reason not to tell you,
I got those Interacting-with-Entities Blues, oh, yeah . . .
You’ll have to imagine the tune on your own, Fair Reader. I can’t be expected to do everything.
America, in the era leading to and through the Civil War, was filled with formidable women who shaped the course of history though they seldom rate more than a footnote in standard accounts.
Fictional Females
Maria Nybro, the main female character in my historical novel Price of Passage, is one such woman. The seventeen-year-old daughter of a small-town boat builder, she resolves to follow her heart’s desire, Anders Gunstensen, to America. She cajoles her father and uncle into a scheme that sends her across the sea with other family members, as caretaker to her strange Aunt Osa.
In central Illinois, where Anders has settled, Maria moves heaven and earth, taking a tough scullery job to stay near him—while meeting her family obligation to care for the bewildered old aunt.
Aunt Osa herself is one of a kind. Marked as a “different” child from infancy, Osa sees herself as a changeling, one of the babies left with unsuspecting human families by huldrefolk, reclusive beings who live in Norway’s forest glades. When asked why she does not have the long, hairy tail of the huldrefolk, she explains that her mother took her to be baptized soon after the exchange, and her rudimentary tail dropped off within days of becoming a Christian.
“The Changeling,” by Henry Fuseli. Public Domain.
Another strong woman in the story is Kirsten Haraldsdatter, mother of four, who fearlessly leads her family’s expedition across the sea to join her husband Osmund, who has gone on ahead to establish a farm. Like Maria and Osa, she is fictional but based on a real woman, a shipmate of my great-great grandfather Anders on the brig Victoria in 1853.
These strong women and others in Price of Passage meet challenges as great as those facing the male characters. Some of those challenges, indeed, are posed by the male characters. When Anders goes off to fight in the Civil War, for instance, Maria must fend off the advances—financial and carnal—of a seedy land speculator. She finds an original way to defend both her farm and herself.
The Real Thing
Mary Ann Bickerdyke, steel engraving by A.H. Ritchie, 1867. Public Domain.
Actual historic women also appear as characters in the book, such as “Mother” Bickerdyke. Mary Ann Ball Bickerdyke, a middle-aged widow from Galesburg, Illinois, who practiced “natural medicine” in that community, went south with a wagon of medical supplies in 1861 to aid the sick and wounded soldiers at Fort Defiance in Cairo, Illinois.
Focused on healthy food and good care for ailing soldiers, Bickerdyke shrugged off Army regulations and red tape. Backed by the Sanitary Commission and the ordinary soldiers, she soon won the full support of Generals Grant and Sherman, who cheerfully deferred to her in matters of soldier care.
Mother Bickerdyke stuck with the Army until the war’s end, serving on nineteen battlefields and establishing three hundred field hospitals. After the war, she continued her work on behalf of the veterans she called “my boys,” lobbying and aiding in their fight for pensions and other benefits.
Bickerdyke was just one of many women who served ably as nurses and Sanitary Commission workers—but she was the most colorful and legendary. When a surgeon questioned her authority to take some action, she replied, “On the authority of Lord God Almighty, have you anything that outranks that?” In a day when male surgeons ruled the Army Medical Department, Bickerdyke caught and held the ear of the generals. Sherman called her “one of his best generals,” and others referred to her as “the Brigadier Commanding Hospitals.”
The soldiers just called her Mother.
She’s only one of the strong, pioneering women you’ll meet when you read Price of Passage.
HISTORY IS NOT WHAT YOU THOUGHT.
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer
Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.
Price of Passage
Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois
Consider Daniel, a young slave in my soon-to-be-published novel Price of Passage.
Daniel felt like a motherless child. His heart thumping, he crouched in the weeds between two of Mister Davis’s warehouses, not far from Mister Davis’s wharf. . . .
The steamboat idled a few yards away.
Torchlight from the wharf made his task more difficult, yet not impossible. . . .
Daniel darted across the open ground. He slipped into the water. His toes sank in warm mud. He waded chest-deep in brown water to the boat. With strong shoulders, he pulled his slim body over the low rail. . . . The deck gang shouted as they drew in the gangplank. The side wheels churned, and the boat backed away from Hurricane Landing. . . .
Light from the landing faded away when the boat turned upriver.
Daniel had been born on Hurricane Plantation, had never left its boundaries. Now he would see the rest of the world. As the wooded shore slid by, lit by stars and a sliver of April’s waning moon, he reckoned he had never traveled so fast. Oh, Mammy, look at me now.
Daniel is a fictional character, but Hurricane Plantation was a real historical place. It was owned by Joseph Emory Davis, whose younger brother Jefferson would lead the Confederacy.
Joseph Davis’s library and a few of his slaves at Hurricane Plantation. Public Domain.
Social Experiment
Joseph Emory Davis. Public Domain.
Joseph Davis worked for years as a lawyer and invested his earnings in Mississippi Delta cotton land, and slaves to work it. He became one of the wealtiest planters in the state and owned more than three hundred African Americans.
Under the sway of utopian reformer Robert Owen, Davis sought to establish a harmonious, and therefore profitable, community based on the master-slave relationship. He provided better-than-usual quarters, clothes, and bedding, more varied and plentiful food. Going beyond physical measures, he established limited self-government, setting up a slave court “where no slave was punished except on conviction by a jury of his peers.” Davis also encouraged his slaves to gain skills in areas that interested them. He allowed them to keep money they earned beyond the value of their labor as field hands. And they could sell their own poultry, eggs, and firewood for in the local economy.
Davis believed Owens’s dictum: “There is but one mode by which man can possess all the happiness his nature is capable of enjoying—that is by the union and co-operation of all for the benefit of each.”
It never occurred to him that the very foundation of slavery—one person owning another—might be incompatible with an ideal society.
A Remarkable Slave
Benjamin Montgomery. Public Domain.
One slave stood out among all others at Hurricane. Benjamin Thornton Montgomery tried to escape but came to terms with Davis when he was made manager of the plantation store. His ability and enterprise led Davis to place him in charge of all purchasing and shipping operations.
Montgomery learned to read and write. He mastered land surveying, flood control, architectural design, machine repair, and steamboat navigation. He made himself a skilled mechanic and inventor and applied for a patent on a new steam-operated propeller for shallow-draft boats.
When the Civil War came and the master of Hurricane Plantation fled the advancing Union troops, it was Montgomery who kept the place going. Resourcefully, he found ways to keep his fellow slaves employed and fed. After the war, he bought the plantation from Davis on a land contract and continued to provide an economic base for the Black community. But in 1876, catastrophic floods made him default on payments, and the land reverted to the Davis family.
Montgomery died the following year. His son, Isaiah, struggled to keep his dream alive, leading a group of former slaves to establish the town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, in 1887 as a majority African-American community.
Another Option
Most Black slaves in the South worked and lived under far less favorable conditions. But they did not simply wait for the U.S. government to emancipate them. There was another option.
Colonies of self-liberated Blacks laid low in swamps and upland forests, sometimes under the noses of their former masters. Dubbed “slavery’s exiles” by historian Sylviane A. Diouf, these reclusive plantation refugees are known to history as maroons.
Fugitive slaves fleeing through a swamp, from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Public Domain.
Unlike the better-documented maroons of the Caribbean basin, the ones who lived in ethe United States are poorly represented in historical accounts. Their colonies, hidden away in every slave state, were small compared to those ofd Brazil, Surinam, Hispaniola, or Cuba. Official records usually called them truants, runaways, or banditti.
But they were more than that. They were organized communities of sub rosa freedom.
Marronage was a hard life that involved hunger, cold, danger, and much privation. Many maroons were caught by professional slave hunters and driven back to the plantations. Many others perished in the woods. But there were those like Thompson West of Plaquemine, Louisiana, who held out until the Yankees arrived and then walked out of the woods, saying, “I’m a free man!”
National Service
What about those African Americans who were already free? At the start of the Civil War, almost half a million free Blacks lived in the United States, South and North. Their numbers were continuously augmented as enslaved people fled their masters and established lives of freedom in northern cities and rural areas.
Frederick Douglass in 1856. Public Domain.
These people had a powerful interest in seeing their enslaved brothers and sisters liberated. They almost unanimously sided with the Union in the war. Many of them wanted to serve militarily.
Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, a self-liberated slave, declared, “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on the earth or under the earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.”
Douglass made this famous remark in April 1863, in the midst of a struggle to get Black Americans admitted to service in the U.S. Army. Everyone who has seen the film Glory knows that, despite African Americans’ willingness to serve, enlistment was denied them until about the mid-point of the war. The rationale was that “colored men won’t fight” or “they won’t make good soldiers.” It took the actual experience of several ground-breaking regiments such as the 54th Massachusetts to begin to dispel these myths.
A fact less well-known is that sailors of color were admitted to the U.S. Navy from the start. More than ten percent of the Continental Navy in the American Revolution was Black. Even more sewrved in state navies and on privateers. In the War of 1812, Blacks represented one-sixth of U.S. naval personnel. In the Civil War, Navy Secretary Gideon Welles authorized recruitment of escaped or liberated slaves in the Atlantic Blockading Squadron from September 1861. These new sailors supplemented many other African Americans already in the Navy. Blacks served on seven hundred Navy ships. Eight won the Medal of Honor for their service. These sailors of color were limited to low-level positions and served under conditions of inequality with white sailors. But serve they did, in large numbers.
Black sailors on USS Galena, a Civil War ironclad. Public Domain.
Astounded Yet?
A utopian plantation. An enterprising inventor/engineer slave. Self-governing communities of runaway slaves in the wilderness. Naval vessels with free Blacks and newly-liberated slaves in their crews.
None of these things are really surprising, if we remember that history is composed of millions of individuals with their own unique situations. They only seem surprising in the face of oversimplified assumptions gathered from popular sources.
I call these instances to your attention, Dear Reader, for selfish purposes. I want you to buy my book, Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation, when it comes out August 23. It is filled with little things like this. Things that may be unexpected but are nonetheless true.
I began writing this novel in the conviction that fiction can be a good way to tell the truth.
So remember:
HISTORY IS NOT WHAT YOU THOUGHT.
Next Week—Some Uppity Women.
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer
Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.
Price of Passage
Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois
In 1856, on the Illinois prairie, Norwegian farmers ANDERS and MARIA encounter DANIEL, a young fugitive slave. Will they do their legal duty by turning him in? Or will they break the laws of their new country and put their lives at risk to aid Daniel in his bid for freedom?
Peasant Farmers, by Julien Joseph. Public Domain.
That’s not really a story. It’s more like a situation, a setup. But it’s a start.
In historical fiction, an author wants to pay attention to the underlying morality of the situation. But you have to build on that. The story of Anders, Maria, and Daniel, as mentioned above, is incomplete without some sense of where Anders and Maria have come from, to be newly-arrived Scandinavian immigrants in central Illinois.
The Captive Slave, by John Philip Simpson. Public Domain.
One also ought to sketch Daniel more fully. What kind of slave life is he trying to escape from? What are his chances? What will he do with his new freedom, if he makes his escape good?
There are more questions than answers.
John Brown.
It’s notable that Anders, Maria, and Daniel all arrived at the same place in 1856—just when the nation’s quarrel over slavery was starting to come to a head. John Brown was murdering pro-slavery men in Kansas about this time. The Dred Scott decision, which gave iron force to the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, would come along in early 1857. Lincoln and Douglas would contest for the Illinois Senate seat in a series of debates in 1858. Brown would show up again, this time raiding the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, in 1859. The pot was coming to a boil.
How would these events affect Anders? Maria? Daniel?
It’s all there in Price of Passage—A Tale of Immmigration and Liberation, coming August 23 from DX Varos Publishing.
Sign up for my free newsletter, The Haphazard Times, above right, to be kept fully informed.
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer
Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.
Price of Passage
Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois
Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation is due August 23. It is expected to weigh eleven ounces and be seven and fifteen-sixteenths inches long.
Congratulations are in order. But pity me carrying it through the hot months!
I acquired Mailerlite software, learned its rudiments, and launched an occasional newsletter for my loyal fans, The Haphazard Times (currently undergoing refinement).
I attended the Chicago Writers Association’s annual conference, where I received much kudos and encouragement from fellow authors.
I applied for a Wisconsin Seller’s Permit.
I sent for a Square Reader so I can process people’s credit card and Paypal purchases at author events such as signings, readings, and book clubs.
I started “going to school” on my friend Greg Renz, successful author of Beneath the Flames. I’m studying what he does to beat the drum for his book, and how he does it.
Oh, yes. I am ordering custom bookmarks to give out with copies of the book.
Take a Breath, Buster
It’s been just over a month. Price of Passage will not arrive until August 23.
I stand presently under a Niagara of marketing, sales, and bookkeeping concerns. I don’t understand half of what I’m doing but plunge ahead anyway. Learn by doing, the saying goes.
Meanwhile, I have a second completed novel a mere whisker away from being ready to start sending queries to publishers. It only needs two or three good days of last-minute polishing, plus the drafting of a good synopsis and query letter. But all that will have to wait.
There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat…
Rodeo cowboys are more terse: “Let ’er buck!”
No matter how you say it, now is the time to sell, even though I’d rather write. We can pick up the pieces afterward.
The Book Trade
Why is it this way?
Maxwell Perkins. Al Ravenna, New York World-Telegram and Sun. Public Domain.
Maybe you think when an author finishes a book, he sends it to his publisher—one of the Big Five—who assigns the manuscript to a top-flight editor, a Maxwell Perkins type in a three-piece suit, then takes out a full-page ad in the New York Times and calls the appropriate committees (Pulitzer, Nobel, etc.). Oh, yes, a book tour of the major cities might be needed, with the author accompanied by two or three publicists and cossetted in luxury suites in four-star hotels. And then the dollars roll in, followed by movie contracts, more dollars, etc.
Well, Gentle Reader, let me assure you:
That is NOT, unless you are Stephen King, How It Works.
Publishers do not sell books. Mostly, they can’t even spare a publicist.
But publicists do not sell books, anyway.
Editors, of course, would not be caught dead selling books.
Even bookstores do not really sell books. They merely conduct the transaction. People come into the store looking to buy books. All the store needs to do is have some on hand.
Amazon? Even more so.
So, you ask, who does sell books?
Authors.
Authors sell books.
So next time you see me, Dear Reader, I will have my foot wedged firmly in your door. And a great book in my hand. You should definitely own a copy or two. And all the members of your extended family should, too. It will make a very thoughtful Christmas or Hanukah gift.
Wish me luck.
Blessings,
Larry F. Sommers, Your New Favorite Writer
Author of Price of Passage—A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.
Price of Passage
Norwegian Farmers and Fugitive Slaves in Pre-Civil War Illinois
