Worrying

After working on my historical novel on and off for about four years, it is finally complete.  One of the things that happened in the process was me having a stroke in May 2015.

It was a minor stroke, and I have made a full recovery, but for a while my short-term memory was unreliable.  I would research a particular aspect of life in 1854, and promptly forget what I had researched.

I needed to rehab my hand, so I switched focus to crochet for a while, and then got the idea for my modern novels and finished them first.

In all that time, there has been an awful lot of change in the world, and I started worrying that the picture I paint in my historical novel would be offensive to some people, as if I am trying to whitewash history.

The book is the first in a series I'm calling "As It Could Be".  In the book, a devout group of Catholics create a community that is welcoming and supportive of all God's children.  This includes former slaves, native Americans, and French immigrants and their children.  The community will grow in future novels to include other immigrants to Louisiana.

My original intent in writing the books was to imagine a world where people like the deBouchet's and the Chauvin's and the Allard's and the Thomas's actually existed, and changed the course of history for themselves and the members of their community.  But as I progressed in my writing, and as the world progressed in the understanding of privilege and cultural appropriation, I worried that people would view my book much differently than I had intended it.

The more I thought about it, the more tangled my thoughts became.  Until I had a moment of clarity.  There were good people in 1854, who did try to create a more equitable society in the United States, and in Louisiana.  They were abolitionists, and conductors on the Underground Railroad.  They were farmers who supported the other farmers in their community, regardless of skin color or nation of origin.

There were colleges in the United States that welcomed women and people of color.  There were schools in New Orleans who did as well.

While my books are undeniably fiction, and present a view of history that is not traditional, I believe the people in my books could have existed.

As the books progress through time to the present, there will be accounts of the darkness that exists in life, but the light will always win. 

I need to believe that in my writing, in the same way I need to believe that in my life.  I hope that my stories bring that light to others as well, and help them to believe in a world that is as it could be, rather than as it is.