When History Meets Fiction

Every summer during a high school and college, I was a lifeguard at a public pool in Northbrook, Illinois, a northern suburb of Chicago. The real pleasure of the job (besides lathering up with baby oil for the richest tan and applying the Sun-In that made your hair orange) was the paperback books trading between the guards and read throughout a series of fifteen-minute breaks. 

The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough ended up the highlight of Summer 1979. Dane, the secret child of the heroine and her Catholic priest lover, made me want to change my name (Dane...Dane...how different my teen-age life would be) until he drowned in the second half of the book.

John Jakes's 8-part series Kent Family Chronicles (The Bastard, The Rebels, The Seekers, The Furies, etc.) was a multi-summer entertainment. Each book was the same, only following a different historical moment (the Revolution, War of 1812, the Gold Rush, Civil War, Abolition, etc.). More potboilers than  successful historical novels, these books delivered easy thrills.

But looking back, they weren’t that good.

I’ve read some great historical novels recently. Cutting for Stone (Abraham Verghese), Someone Knows My Name (Lawrence Hill). Sitting a notch below but still satisfying is Robin Oliveira’s My Name is Mary Sutter, which covers the opening years of the Civil War through the eyes of a young midwife who yearns to be a surgeon, her New York family and the two doctors who nurture her fledgling career.

In certainly the most interesting twist, Abraham Lincoln emerges as an important secondary character. Here, he’s more than cameo role, more than a walk-on. Interspersed with the fictional characters, he suffers the death of his beloved son Willie and finds himself frustrated over the conflicting war strategies of his advisors. As the Civil War begins, Commander of the Union Army George McClellan wants to swiftly move his men into battle, while General Irvin McDowell believes the Union soldiers unprepared and advises a wait-and-see approach. (Interesting historical fact covered by the book: Robert E. Lee was President Lincoln’s first choice to lead the Union forces but the Virginia native opted to secede and embraced the Confederacy.) Thus, Lincoln, like the nation, is caught between aggressive action and careful introspection.

And so is Mary Sutter, the young woman so furiously bent on going south and becoming a surgeon on (or near) the battlefield. Her family wants to pull her back to safety.

For me, this is what makes a historical novel great. When the author identifies the themes of the chosen history and presents these themes within the physical, psychological and emotional experiences of the lead characters. Here, Mary equals Lincoln. And Dr. James Blevens, one of Mary’s mentors, believes that more soldiers can be saved if doctors invest in the possibilities of the microscope rather than the quick fix of the ambulance. (See, the introspection of research into diseases killing the soldiers off the battlefield versus the ability to get wounded soldiers into hospitals as rapidly as possible.)

Similarly, Abraham Verghese, in Cutting for Stone, effectively echoes the fracture of the political brotherhood of Ethiopia and Eritria during the War of Independence of the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s with the conflict between Marion and Shiva Stone, twins born of a nun and the emotionally vacant Dr. Thomas Stone at a mission hospital in Addis Abiba.

Read Cutting for Stone before Mary Sutter, but consider both to be fine novels of history.