Historical Figures in Historical Fiction -- a Guest Entry from Lloyd Mullins

 Lloyd Mullins grew up on an Indiana tree farm, and then spent 20 years serving in the U.S. Air Force. After retiring from the service, he started college, earning his B.A. in English, and M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Fiction. His latest novel, A Rare and Dangerous Beast, is an historical novel, and his first, Thumperica! A Novel of the Ghost of America Future is a dystopian satire. He also blogs sporadically at www.moonsthoughts.com.

 

 

 Writing Historical Figures in Fiction: A Harrowing but Rewarding Challenge

The most important thing about historical fiction, to me anyway, is how it can inspire a reader to want to learn more – even fiction that is historically inaccurate can do that. For example, the film The Harder They Fall: really fun movie (at least I thought so), terrible history. But it inspired me to want to learn more about the historical figures that were represented in it. Historically accurate fiction is on a whole other level. While The Harder They Fall convinced me to Google the characters for an overview, I have no idea how many books I’ve bought trying to figure out which parts of The Flashman Papers were real, and which were imagined; certainly more than are in the entire Flashman series. Historical fiction also comes much closer to putting the reader in the action, so to speak. It often packs a gut-punch that historical non-fiction lacks, because to the reader, it becomes personal. That gut-punch effect was what I was shooting for in my own novel A Rare and Dangerous Beast.

When the bar is set so high, incorporating historical figures into fiction can be daunting, especially for a newcomer like me. It was made doubly so due to the fact that many of the historical figures in my novel are Native American, an historically misrepresented people. There are many who would say that I, a white guy, have no business trying to present their side of the story, and I can’t say they’d be wrong. It was, therefore, extremely important to me that I get it right, or at least as right as I possibly could, out of my respect and admiration for their courage and resilience in the face of centuries of genocide.

Roughly half of my novel is centered around the Cheyenne and the Nez Perce people, including our wars against them. One thing I wanted to do (aside from telling a cracking good story) was to show a parallel between how Native Americans were treated, and how other minorities (especially Chinese and African-Americans), and poor white farmers and ranchers were dealt with by those in power. There are quite a few parallels, or at least similarities.

Naturally, my efforts started with research. Sadly, Native accounts of the events in my novel are not abundant, and almost all have been filtered through white authors, and almost definitely edited by the Native Americans when telling their stories to those white authors, for audiences that would be almost exclusively white, and many of whom (at the time of original publication) were possibly still nursing grudges, or clinging to a more comfortable (for them) version. All too often, to misquote the great line from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “This is America sir, When the legend becomes fact, believe the legend”. If you doubt that, read A Misplaced Massacre by Air Kelman, which deals, in part, with the fierce resistance by many white Coloradans to the establishment of the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, almost 150 years after the event.

Obviously, Chief Black Kettle of the Cheyenne, and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce would need to be represented. For Chief Black Kettle, and many of the Cheyenne, I relied heavily on The Life of George Bent: Written from His Letters by George E. Hyde. It was as close to a pure Cheyenne account of those times as I could find. Even so, I was forced to rely on my imagination in regard to Black Kettle’s personality. I essentially looked at his actions, and extrapolated from those what sort of man he was. It became clear to me that he was an exceptionally strong and courageous man, and that is how I wanted to portray him. To me, he was a brave man who loved his people more than his pride, knew that peace was their only real chance for survival, and was willing to risk everything for that peace. That his efforts ended in two of the worst atrocities in American military history was no fault of his.

Chief Joseph was a little easier, because much more has been written about him (often romanticized and inaccurate), but two books by Lucullus V. McWhorter, Yellow Wolf: His Own Story, and Hear Me My Chiefs! Nez Perce Legend & History, provided 1^st-hand(ish) accounts of him (and many others) by the Nez Perce themselves, as well as of the events. It was important to try to view these people, their adversaries, and events through the eyes of those who survived. My characterizations of them, and the rest of the historical figures in the novel, would obviously have to be my best guess at what they were like.

I was also excited to include Yellow Wolf to readers who might never have heard of him. I particularly enjoyed portraying him as he grew from a mischievous boy into the courageous warrior that he became.

I enjoyed working the mixed race (white and Cheyenne) figures George and Charlie Bent, and Edmund Guerrier in, because their cases were somewhat similar to that of my (fictional) main character, Nate Luck (Anatoly Lukyanov), the son of a minor Russian noble and a Buriat Mongol mother. Both George Bent and Guerrier were educated in the east; George Bent had fought (briefly) for the Confederacy during the Civil War, and both he and Guerrier had returned to live with the Cheyenne. They offered what you might call a “soft landing” for Nate with the Cheyenne.

Three other historical figures I also enjoyed working in to the book, in brief appearances, were Tom Horn, Charlie Siringo, and Lucy Wanzer. Tom Horn is familiar to just about anyone with any knowledge of the Old West, and he can be a really polarizing figure. When I was younger, he was a hero of mine (I mean, Steve McQueen played him). Since then, I’ve been torn about him. In the end, I decided that he was, like most of our Western “heroes”, probably neither a hero nor a villain, but a guy living a rough life in a rough world, in a time that was leaving him and those like him behind. There’s not much evidence of him being involved in the Johnson County War, but it’s possible, and Charlie Siringo and others put him there, so I thought it would be fun to put him in, in a way that would be believable in the face of the lack of evidence.

Charlie Siringo is included just because he might have been in the area at the time, and he did cross paths with Horn. He was also a helluva storyteller, and I’d reached a point where some levity was needed. His chief contribution to Beast is telling a story from his days as a Pinkerton agent. If I write another book like this one, he’s one I’d definitely like to include more.

Lucy Wanzer makes her appearance as the result of another rabbit hole. While researching educational possibilities for women in San Francisco in the late 19^th century, I stumbled across her, and immediately knew that she had to be included. She was an amazing, salty, trailblazing woman, and was a perfect role model for Nate’s Nez Perce stepdaughter, Walks Through. If ever a character needed a strong role model, it was Walks Through, a Nez Perce girl determined to become a doctor in the 1890s (for those who will say it was impossible, she is also supported by Nate’s fabulously wealthy and influential sister Natasha, who can be ruthless. In any time, in any country, money talks.). Anyway, neither Horn, Siringo, nor Wanzer play a major role, but those little “cameo” roles are things I love, and I don’t think I’m the only one. The hardest part with them is to make their appearances believable.

The villain of my novel, Bill Morrow is an amalgamation of three historical figures: William Morrow, Arthur “Ad” Chapman, and George Wellman. For most of the novel he is Nate’s nemesis: as viewed by Nate, he is chameleonic, opportunistic, cowardly, and altogether villainous. Since not a great deal is known about those three, especially Morrow, he was a lot of fun to write. Since I was working from Nate’s viewpoint, I could make him as awful as I wanted to, and I did, although I did offer him a bit of redemption in the end (spend enough time writing and thinking about anybody, and you can’t help but feel some empathy, or at least sympathy). No one is ever all bad.

Most of the characters in the novel are actual historical figures, except for Nate’s immediate family and friends, and when information was available about them, I tried to remain true to, if not their personalities, their actions and/or fates. For the rest, I tried to, at the very least, treat them with dignity, and portray them as real people caught up in situations often beyond their control.

I also took the liberty of naming many of the fictional characters for historical figures. Most of Nate’s fellow soldiers are named after men from the 1^st Colorado Cavalry. Nate’s Nez Perce wife, Coming Together, is named for a Nez Perce warrior woman, and her experience at the end of the Nez Perce war is taken from that of an unnamed Nez Perce woman.

The hardest historical figure to write was John Chivington, chief perpetrator of the Sand Creek Massacre. Here was a figure that I have no empathy or sympathy for, yet I felt I needed to try to portray him fairly, sticking to the historical record. That was tough. Of all the historical figures in my book, he was really the only one I wanted to take liberties with. It took an exceptional amount of self-restraint, something for which I am not known, to write him as I did. Of course it helped that the historical record already paints him about as black as it could be.

Anyway, that’s the story of my first experience in working historical figures into fiction. I hope no one is reading this looking for advice, because I don’t really have any, other than research, research, research, and that’s kind of a given. I personally found it very rewarding, and I feel my book is all the better for including these, and many other historical figures. I wasn’t trying to educate anyone – that would have been a mistake – but I was trying to tell a story that would ring true to the reader, and hopefully be more than just an average pulp Western shoot-em-up. I also hope that some readers will be inspired by it to want to learn more of the true facts about these people and events (I included a bibliography for them).

I guess the upshot of all this is that incorporating historical figures and trying to make them historically accurate is hard, but when it works, it’s worth it. The worst thing is that, as the author, whether or not it works in my book isn’t up to me. It’s up to the reader. If you happen to read my book, feel free to let me know how you think I did. 

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the Bridge to Tomorrow Trilogy.  

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Helena P. Schrader on Biographical Fiction -- Or the Fine Art of Resurrecting the Dead

Helena P. Schrader is the author of six non-fiction history books and twenty historical novels, twelve of which have won one or more literary award. Her novels on the Battle of Britain and the Berlin Airlift have been a #1 best-sellers on amazon. She holds a PhD in History earned with a dissertation on a leading figure in the German Resistance to Hitler and served more than a decade in the U.S. Diplomatic Corps. Born and raised in the United States, she has since lived in Asia, South America, Africa and more than forty years in Europe, where she is now retired. 

My first published work was a non-fiction biography of General Friedrich Olbricht so it is probably not surprising that I soon turned to biographical fiction.  Biographical fiction is the art of bringing historical figures back to life. It turns a name in the history books into a person so vivid, complex, and yet comprehensible that history itself becomes more understandable. Good biographical fiction provides insight into the psychology of real historical characters and so helps explain the historical events these men and women helped shape by explaining the motives and character traits that drove them to play their role in history.*

While I love writing biographical fiction, it has a number of unique challenges. As with writing history of any kind, there are always gaps in the historical record and events so controversial or complex that they produce multiple, conflicting accounts. When writing biography, however, there is the added challenge of trying to understand motives for recorded actions and the emotions of the individuals involved ― unless, of course, the subject kept diaries or wrote letters and memoirs describing emotions. In that case, however, the biographer is confronted with the equally challenging issue of how honest or self-serving such documents are!

Biographers like historians, whether working in fiction or non-fiction, must fill in gaps, select between competing accounts of events, and speculate about motives and emotions. Non-fictional biographers do this openly by discussing the different possible interpretations and explaining the reasoning behind their analysis of the character’s actions and motives. Novelists do this by turning their analysis of events into a novel and their interpretation of the personalities into characters.

For the biographical novelist, the historical record is therefore the skeleton ― or plot ― of the book. History, not the novelist, defines the beginning and the end of the principal character, and indeed all the essential historical events in between. But most readers do not want to read about skeletons, certainly not inert ones. They want characters with flesh and blood – with faces, emotions, dreams, and fears. The goal of a biographical novelist is to add contours, colours, animation and above all personality to that historical skeleton.

The novelist’s toolbox for fleshing out a historical skeleton includes research into the “skeleton’s” family background, social status, and profession (and that of the “skeleton’s” ancestors, spouse and partners as well). It includes investigating the customs and culture of the society in which the “skeleton” lived, the legal system to which he or she was subject, the technology and fashions of the age and more. In addition, the biographer (whether for fiction or non-fiction) must also investigate the biographies of known figures who influenced the subject: e.g. their parents, siblings, spouses, colleagues, superiors and subordinates, partners, opponents and rivals.

Only after the biographer has developed an understanding of the environment in which the subject lived and the relationships the historical figure had with his contemporaries is it possible to start constructing a plausible character. Based on this research, the novelist evolves an understanding of why the subject acted in one way or another. The novelist is able to hypothesize the emotions the subject likely felt in certain situations, and to understand the fears, inhibitions, ambitions, and obsessions that might have driven, inspired, warped, and hindered the protagonist. An excellent example of this is Sharon Kay Penman’s biographical novel of Richard III, The Sunne in Splendour. She effectively explains King Richard III by showing how his childhood relationships with his brothers and his Neville cousins made him the man he became.

So far, so good, but a good novelist, in contrast to a non-fiction biographer, also wants to address readers at a literary level. A good novel is not just accurate history about engaging characters, it should also have some compelling themes that will keep the reader thinking about the book long after the reading is over. In biographical fiction, however, the historical skeleton limits a novelist’s freedom of action. It is not possible to give a biographical novel about Anne Boleyn a happy ending!

So this is where it gets tricky ― and bit controversial: a biographical novelist striving to produce a work of art may feel the need to deviate – carefully, selectively, and strategically – from the historical record. This is not about giving a character two heads, or only one hand: it is about changing very subtly some of the “flesh and blood.”

Let me give an example from the world of painting. The surviving contemporary paintings of Isabella I of Castile painted by unknown artists who may have met her are not terribly flattering or inspiring.

 However, there are many portraits of Isabella by subsequent artists who had certainly never laid eyes on her yet who produced works that are far more evocative and appealing. These later works may not as accurately depict Isabella’s physical features, yet they may capture her spirit in that they make the viewer see aspects of Isabella’s known personality – her piety combined with her iron will, and so on.

 This explains how different works of biographical fiction about the same subject can be very different ― yet equally good. Is Schiller’s or Shaw’s Joan of Arc better? I cannot say offhand which one historians would choose as more accurate, but I do know that both – regardless of which is more accurate – are great works of biographical fiction.

Creating a work of art requires clarity of purpose, consistency of style, and a proper use of light and dark. It requires not only extrapolating and interpreting, but some outright falsification. In a novel, it almost always requires the creation some fictional characters – servants or friends, lovers or rivals – that serve as foils for highlighting character traits, explain later (known) behavior, or provide contrast in order to give the central character deeper contours.

However, from my experience as a writer of non-fictional biography (Codename Valkyrie: General Olbricht and the Plot Against Hitler) and biographical fiction (the Leonidas of Sparta trilogy and the Balian d’Ibelin trilogy), the greatest challenge for the biographical novelist is paring away or condensing some of the known facts or strategically making changes to the historical record in order to produce a clearer and more compelling central character or more comprehensible story.

When resurrecting the dead, historical novelists seek to raise the spirit, not the body. The spirit, not each pound of flesh or each wrinkle on the face, is what we wish our readers and future generations to understand and honor. And spirits are always ethereal, elusive – and not quite real.

 * This essay is based on an article that first appeared in the History Press. Copyright Helena P. Schrader