The past? Who cares?

I care, that’s who. 

My name is Larry F. Sommers. 

I wrote my first story on my Big Chief pencil tablet, in third grade, when I was supposed to be doing something else. Though a shameless imitation of Richard Diamond, Private Detective—a Saturday radio serial of those days—it was a pretty good story that had a beginning, a middle, and an end. 

After that, I got sidetracked for a few decades in the circuitous business of living a life.

In 2009 I retired from my full-time job and immediately began a wonderful part-time job at the helm of a prestigious religious periodical. At the end of 2015, I retired from this great gig so I could give my whole attention to learning the art of fiction.

I write fiction because I think that it’s the best way to tell the truth. I write historical fiction because I seek to find fresh meanings in our common past.

My people are from Knoxville, a small town in Illinois. Two of my uncles died flying bombers to defeat the Axis Powers in the 1940s.

When my Grandma’s house was torn down in 1963, workers found under the siding boards a square-hewn timber cabin built by storekeeper John G. Sanburn in 1832. This cabin was restored to its frontier appearance and can be seen today on the Public Square in Knoxville.

I lived in Streator, Illinois, birthplace of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered the planet Pluto . . . and of author Clarence Mulford, who created the cowboy character Hopalong Cassidy. As a boy I haunted the Streator Public Library—a lovely classical building donated by Andrew Carnegie—where I read science fiction by Lester Del Rey, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke. 

I was twelve in 1957 when Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, was launched. I mourned because the Russians had done what Americans were supposed to do.

I attended high school in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Our history teacher, Leo Gebhardt, was on a first-name basis with the Founding Fathers: “. . . and just then,” he would say, “when our new country needed its credit stabilized, who should come along? Your friend and mine . . .  Alexander Hamilton.”

I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy, and the Vietnam War. I have seen how such events can live on as skywritten myths, having a shaky attachment to facts.

In middle age, I became a Christian, coming into line with a 2,000-year tradition of saints, sinners, scholars, artists, musicians, and freedom fighters.

Our lives—ALL our lives—are part of history, and history is a part of our lives. That’s why I write.

T.S. Eliot wrote:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

I want to go where we’ve been before, yet see it with fresh eyes. Why not come along?