Historical Figures in Historical Fiction -- a Guest Entry from Jan Ellen Kurth

 Though born in Kansas City, Jan Ellen Kurth is mostly drawn to the historic tales of northern Appalachia--especially from New York State’s Southern Tier and Western Pennsylvania. A graduate of Vassar College and SUNY Buffalo, Kurth’s work has appeared in various publications including Print - Pittsburgh’s East End Community Newspaper, NextPittsburgh, and the Jamestown [NY] Journal. Recent awards for her work include a Golden Quill from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania and two Keystone Media Awards from the Pennsylvania News Media Association Foundation. She is the author of a previous novel, Broken Angels.

 

Why I Like Using Real-Life People in Historical Fiction

In my more cynical or self-deprecating moments, I sometimes think to myself “you really are a lazy writer.”

Sure, I put a lot of research time into any piece of historical fiction I write. And I do everything I can to make the era feel alive with the best imaginative effort I can muster. I want to breathe life into my characters and make them feel like flesh-and-blood human beings. 

But I have little interest in fabricating plots or characters out of whole cloth. I suppose you could chalk this up to laziness. But why go to the effort when there are so many fascinating people with stories that have long been forgotten if they were ever much remembered at all? 

As a writer, I find myself drawn to these little known stories, especially those where there is some limited or fragmentary documentary evidence, but not enough to create a credible non-fiction account. 

So I would probably never write a novel centering, say, Eleanor Roosevelt. Partly because she left so much evidence documenting her own life that there is not much room to maneuver, not unless you take great liberties with the known facts, which I am not inclined to do. 

But what about Mary Callahan, who ran her own pub in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the years before World War I? Callahan successfully fought off certain religious dry forces that tried to shut her down through blackmail and extortion. She also lied about being an impoverished widow (she never married) to get the City Fathers off her back.

What about the city’s Director of Public Safety, Charles Hubbard, who launched a morals crusade in the same era? During his tenure, laws barring unescorted women from entering saloons were finally enforced with a vengeance, along with bans on public dancing, street musicians, and the “promiscuous mixing” of men and women in movie theaters. 

What about the market women, many of whom were immigrants, who ran their own little businesses selling fruit, vegetables, cheese, or flowers at the city’s old Market House? These women, the newspapers warned us, gathered en masse in the saloons that Hubbard targeted, and drank (allegedly) like “Sherman tanks”.

These are the stories I tackled in “The Market Women of Diamond Square,” which came out in September 2024. The majority of the characters had at least some reference to a real-life person for which there was at least some fragmentary evidence. 

Perhaps the best known “real” character, at least to those with some familiarity with America’s history of religious revivals, was Billy Sunday, though his was something of a cameo appearance. Sunday’s appearance in Pittsburgh was extensively covered by the newspapers of the time, so virtually nothing had to be invented. 

On the other hand, the actual market women left little trace of their existence beyond a random name or two, and few of these names were connected to actual deeds. The newspaper accounts tell us about their protests over high rents, their attempt to fight back when the city decided to demolish the public market house to benefit Downtown property owners. And, of course, about their drinking proclivities. But they never tell us the names of the women who actually did these things. So they had to be created one by one.

In some cases, I was able to borrow names from random accounts. I once found a classified ad placed by a woman named Margaret, who sold herbs at the Market House. So she was resurrected as Margaret the Herb Lady, who is something of a mentor to the younger market women, including my main character, Katya, who was entirely invented. 

In another case, I found a newspaper article referring to a woman named Esther Davis who was arrested in Diamond Square on public drunkenness charges. I could find nothing else about this particular Esther in the U.S. Census or anywhere else. The newspapers didn’t say that Esther was a market woman, but she got made into one. I also decided that Esther (now known as Ester) would lead the fight against the high rents, and ultimately fall in love with the aforementioned Katya. 

I should mention here that you get to this level of detail by a scrupulous reading of all the local newspapers of the time--an effort that can be alternatively very tedious and very rewarding. 

A few more words on Charles Hubbard, the morals crusader, might be in order here. Though he is not much remembered today, even by Pittsburgh historians, his life is pretty well documented in the newspapers and the archives. I found out in the course of my research that Hubbard never married and lived at the Duquesne Club, which was then a men’s social club strictly limited to the city’s elite. A few bachelors actually made their residence at the Duquesne Club, and Hubbard was one of them. Details as to what his life was like there--what he ate for dinner, his personal habits, and so forth--were not recorded anywhere, so I had to speculate as to what those might be. I can only hope I was approximately right. 

I guess in historical fiction, that’s the best one can hope for--that you’re approximately right. And not too lazy in getting there.

 

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Blog Host, Helena P. Schrader, is the author of  

the Bridge to Tomorrow Trilogy.  

The first two volumes are available now, the third Volume will be released later this year.

The first battle of the Cold War is about to begin....

Berlin 1948.  In the ruins of Hitler’s capital, former RAF officers, a woman pilot, and the victim of Russian brutality form an air ambulance company. But the West is on a collision course with Stalin’s aggression and Berlin is about to become a flashpoint. World War Three is only a misstep away. Buy Now

Berlin is under siege. More than two million civilians must be supplied by air -- or surrender to Stalin's oppression.

USAF Captain J.B. Baronowsky and RAF Flight Lieutenant Kit Moran once risked their lives to drop high explosives on Berlin. They are about to deliver milk, flour and children’s shoes instead. Meanwhile, two women pilots are flying an air ambulance that carries malnourished and abandoned children to freedom in the West. Until General Winter deploys on the side of Russia. Buy now!

 Based on historical events, award-winning and best-selling novelist Helena P. Schrader delivers an insightful, exciting and moving tale about how former enemies became friends in the face of Russian aggression — and how close the Berlin Airlift came to failing. 

 Watch a Video Teaser Here!

 Winning a war with milk, coal and candy!

 

Historical Figures in Historical Fiction -- A Guest Post by Tracey Warr

 Tracey Warr was born in London and lives in a tiny medieval house next to a river in southern France, where she is surrounded by spectacular castles, such as Najac and Penne, and fascinating stories about their medieval occupants. She draws on archeological sites, old maps, chronicles, poems and museum objects to create fictional worlds for her readers to step into. She has published six historical novels. Before becoming a full-time writer, she worked as a contemporary art curator and art history academic. Find out more at: https://meandabooks.com

 

 Biography of biographical historical fiction?

The 12th century monk chronicler, William of Malmesbury described the heroine of my first novel as ‘afflicted with a Godless female itch’. That seemed a good reason to me to write about her. Almodis de La Marche was married three times and was countess of Toulouse and then countess of Barcelona in the 11^th century. Her third husband, Ramon Berenguer of Barcelona, kidnapped her from her second husband, Pons of Toulouse, possibly at her contrivance. Almodis’ three marriages were the reason for William of Malmesbury’s harsh words. The pope excommunicated Almodis and Ramon for that third marriage.

The count of Barcelona described Almodis as ‘radiant upon Earth’. She was a powerful female lord, who is documented as active in the rule of Toulouse and then Barcelona. She also found time to have eleven children. (She is the great great grandmother of Eleanor of Aquitaine.) Researching her life yielded rich material, and my dilemma was whether to write her biography or a novel about her. In the end, the fiction won out. Writing a novel gave me leeway to use the evidence about her but to imagine her personality and story into the gaps. She gave birth to two sets of twins and, in the novel, I made her an identical twin with her sister Raingarde, which may or may not have been true. I met a woman who was an identical twin, who told me about some of her experiences of twinness. In a novel, I was able to blend historical facts with incidents and experiences from my own life that chimed with the needs of the story.

Having the framework of a real life to work with in fiction gives me anchors and handholds in research. There are some facts, dates, relationships, events to find out about and imagine among, rather than being in a complete starting vacuum. Since my heroines are medieval women, there are scant facts known about them so there is plenty of space for imaginative roaming and creation.

Medieval birth dates were rarely recorded. I have to create credible timelines based on wedding dates when they are known, periods of pregnancy, dates of birth of children, and so on. And then I augment the evidence with a lot of secondary sources – biographies, histories, journal articles, genealogies and reading on particular topics, such as sex or food in the middle ages.

Of course a character in a novel, whether based on a real historical figure or not, is still a fictional character. In the case of a medieval women, what she looked like, how she responded in various situations, her desires, motivations, fears, affections are all coming from my imagination. I am aiming for credibility rather than authenticity.

Handholds for Research

The protagonists of my first five novels are real women who I found in medieval chronicles. They receive scant attention in these chronicles – often just a sentence, at most a paragraph – but that was enough to spur me into research about and around them and to fire my imagination to fill in the gaps. I am looking for women who buck the stereotype of medieval women.

The chronicler Ademar of Chabannes wrote that Emma of Segur, viscountess of Limoges, was kidnapped by vikings from a monastery on the coast of Aquitaine in the 10th century. She became the heroine of my second novel, The Viking Hostage. The vikings held Emma hostage for two years while her husband was struggling to raise the enormous ransom that was demanded for her return. What happened to Emma during those two years? Ademar has nothing to say on the subject, so I decided to imagine my way into an answer.

Debateable History, Reading People

Nest ferch Rhys was the daughter of the last independent king in Wales during the protracted Norman conquest. Unlike England, which was conquered in a day at Hastings, the conquest of Wales took many decades. Nest’s life was so turbulent that I had enough material to write a trilogy of novels about her (Daughter of the Last King, The Drowned Court, and The Anarchy).

Nest was the mistress of the Norman king Henry I and had a son with him. She was the wife of the Norman steward of her father’s former strongholds, Gerald FitzWalter. It was a common strategy for the Norman invaders to take Anglo-Saxon and Welsh women, the daughters of their vanquished foes, as their wives to lend credibility to their territorial appropriations. These wives provided a bridge to the conquered communities.

The Chronicle of the Princes (Brut y Twysogion) recounts how Nest was kidnapped from her Norman husband Gerald by the Welsh prince Owain ap Cadwallader. When Owain attacked the castle, Gerald escaped down the castle’s toilet chute into the moat, apparently at Nest’s suggestion. After a couple of years, she was returned to Gerald through the negotiations of her former lover, King Henry. Gerald later killed Owain in a skirmish and then died himself, perhaps from wounds inflicted in the fight. King Henry then married Nest off to yet another Norman, Stephen de Marais, the constable of another of her father’s appropriated castles at Ceredigion.

The women in my first five novels were all kidnapped. This ripping from one situation to another is a trope that interests me. Nest has been described as ‘the Helen of Troy of Wales’ and several historians have suggested that her string of lovers was the result of her beauty or perhaps even her promiscuity. That made me quite angry and I wanted to write her fictional story to try to get to the truth of her story – or at least one possible truth. It has been suggested that she colluded in Owain’s kidnap of her. She had been living with Gerald then for ten years and had three children with him. Clearly, she was caught between the opposing camps of the Normans and the Welsh, but it seemed unlikely to me that she would have willingly left Gerald and her small children.

I look at what I feel the realistic psychology and motivations of my characters might be. Another novelist would interpret the same historical person and event in a different way. They are always a fictional creation. I make judgement calls on grey areas of history, based on the needs of my story and the consistency of the character I am creating. I am reading the evidence – about Nest or Almodis – weighing the the misogyny of their societies and our own, and striving to create a character with consistency and credibility.

Since I am writing about a real woman and researching her context, many of my other characters are also based on real people. In particular, I enjoyed creating King Henry who had at least 23 illegitimate children and many mistresses, but also took care of those mistresses and children. There is always more information available about the men than about the women. The majority of available material is about the medieval nobility. My non-noble characters, such as maids and stewards, all have to be imagined.

In a novel, I am able to take a very slight historical detail and make good use of it. Nest’s final lover may have been Hayt, the Sheriff of Pembroke and they may have had a child. He was a real person recorded in the court rolls but not much else is known about him. His name suggests that he was Flemish. I met a charming Dutch man around the time that I was creating Haith (as he became in the novel) and I used him as the physical model for Nest’s final lover.

Real historical figures, fictional characters

My first five novels could be termed biographical historical fiction. I tell most of the lives of the women in a single novel or in a trilogy of novels. For my most recent book, Love’s Knife, however, I decided to take a different tack. My protagonist is a fictional character and not based on a real historical character. I wanted the book’s action to take place in a short span of time – nine months. Nevertheless, one of the main secondary characters is based on a real woman and the facts known about her life give me a framework to work within for what I intend to be a long-running series.

I often have a poet as a character in the novels. A female troubadour in Almodis, a skald in The Viking Hostage, and a bard in the Conquest trilogy about Nest. In Love’s Knife, the protagonist, Beatriz de Farrera, is a female troubadour. These characters allow me to include fragments of the real medieval voice in the novels. Beatriz’s patron is the real historical character, Philippa of Toulouse, who later becomes the Duchess of Aquitaine. (She was Almodis’ granddaughter and the grandmother of Eleanor of Aquitaine.) Love’s Knife is book 1 in the Trobairitz Sleuth series and I’m currently having fun researching Philippa’s life and imagining Beatriz’s.

https://books2read.com/LovesKnife

Blog Host, Helena P. Schrader, is the author of  

the Bridge to Tomorrow Trilogy.  

The first two volumes are available now, the third Volume will be released later this year.

The first battle of the Cold War is about to begin....

Berlin 1948.  In the ruins of Hitler’s capital, former RAF officers, a woman pilot, and the victim of Russian brutality form an air ambulance company. But the West is on a collision course with Stalin’s aggression and Berlin is about to become a flashpoint. World War Three is only a misstep away. Buy Now

Berlin is under siege. More than two million civilians must be supplied by air -- or surrender to Stalin's oppression.

USAF Captain J.B. Baronowsky and RAF Flight Lieutenant Kit Moran once risked their lives to drop high explosives on Berlin. They are about to deliver milk, flour and children’s shoes instead. Meanwhile, two women pilots are flying an air ambulance that carries malnourished and abandoned children to freedom in the West. Until General Winter deploys on the side of Russia. Buy now!

 Based on historical events, award-winning and best-selling novelist Helena P. Schrader delivers an insightful, exciting and moving tale about how former enemies became friends in the face of Russian aggression — and how close the Berlin Airlift came to failing. 

 Watch a Video Teaser Here!

 Winning a war with milk, coal and candy!