Frances Hunter
blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth
Frances Hunter's Journal
March 2006
March 31, 2006: The Eureka Moment, Part II
It's been very rare in my lifetime to be struck by lightning by a great idea. For To the Ends of the Earth, it happened on August 29, 2003. My task for the day had been to continue on the research about arch-villain James Wilkinson. I e-mailed Mary a report with a lot of information about Wilkinson's nefarious doings, including the following two items:
Item 1: Wilkinson cultivated a British lord who offered him the command of 10,000 men to seize Louisiana for the British. Wilkinson reported the contact to the Spanish and claimed to have sent an assassin after the man, though the lord escaped death thanks to his armed escort (provided by Wilkinson!). Could it be that Wilkinson does the same thing to Lewis - sends assassins AND provides him with an armed escort (Neely)??
Item 2: Wilkinson led GR Clark and others into a conspiracy to try to detach Kentucky and the West as a separate section allied with Spain. Clark was going to lead some 800 Kentucky riflemen down to take New Orleans in exchange for payment in Spanish land grants. The whole plot was for Wilkinson to curry favor with Spain. Wilkinson never intended that it should succeed.
What happened next was incredibly exciting. Mary e-mailed back:
COULD IT BE that Wilkinson approached LEWIS about a scheme to take over some portion of the West, with Lewis and Clark themselves as "Los Jefes," and Wilkinson in charge of the Army?
And that Lewis didn't tell Clark, because he was mindful that Clark's
OWN BROTHER was destroyed by Wilkinson's schemes, and didn't want Clark to even KNOW that such a thing had been proposed?And that Wilkinson discovered to his dismay that he had finally met
an honest man, who refused to be played and wasn't susceptible to his sleazy enticements and snakelike charms? And who threatened to blow the whole thing wide open and take Wilkinson down?
Over the course of the day the plot unfolded before us as if it was writing itself:
Wilkinson assumes he can talk Lewis into it because Lewis is young,
ambitious, and a political naif. He assumes Lewis and Clark will do
anything to become masters of their own fiefdom -- all the more
because Lewis has been ill-treated by Little Jemmy's [Madison] government. Of course they can be bribed -- who can resist him? "They ALL take the bait in the end."Of course, what he's really after is his usual wheeze, which he has
played out time and time again -- namely to destroy them both and
remove them as potential rivals and obstacles for his mad schemes in the territory.BUT
What Wilkinson DOESN'T understand is that Lewis' mind just doesn't
work that way (neither does Clark's). PLUS Lewis has had time to
take his measure -- Lewis just covered the Burr trial for Jefferson
and SAW him screw over his old comrade in conspiracy, for God's sake.PLUS Lewis knows all about the great George Rogers Clark and how he was screwed by the government, enticed and then betrayed by Wilkinson, and became a burned out drunk and a broken man.
Is it any wonder Lewis is stressed out -- when his own life is
starting to look like a bad re-run of G.R. Clark's? When Wilkinson's
offer is tantamount to a mafioso's "kiss of death?" And he can't even tell Clark -- because doing so would just draw his friend into the dastardly conspiracy!
These raw e-mails show the excitement of the creative process as it unfolded in real time. As I look back on it, it couldn't have happened without the thought, discussion, and research that had proceeded it. Only when all of the parts of the brain had received enough raw information could the creative spark ignite. I'll have some final, more general thoughts about how that happens (or more often doesn't happen) in an upcoming post.
March 21, 2006: Jacob's Ladder
Jacob's Ladder by Donald McCaig is a big, sprawling novel of the Civil War. Dickensian in scope, the book follows the inhabitants of a Virginia plantation called Stratford, both white and black, as the existence they've always known is shattered forever by the coming of the war. In the course of the novel, every character is tested beyond anything they could have ever imagined. Some manage to make choices that leave them with honor, love, and freedom; others fall by the wayside.
The book begins in 1859 with the youthful love affair between Duncan Gatewood, the young son of the Stratford's owner, and Midge, a pretty little slave who works in the house. The consequences of Duncan and Midge's affair explode when Midge gives birth to Duncan's son, Jacob, and Duncan wants to acknowledge the child as his own. But anything that the impulsive pair might have done is derailed by the coming of the war.
What happens to Duncan after he joins the Confederate Army and Midge after she is sold away from Stratford are just two of the threads that make up the absorbing tapestry of Jacob's Ladder. Some of the other intriguing characters are Sallie Kirkpatrick, a young girl who becomes a woman in the brutal military hospitals of Richmond; her husband Alexander, a vain schoolmaster who drifts from one disaster to the next; Jesse Burns, who runs away from Stratford and seeks pride and a new future as one of the Union's colored troops; and Catesby Byrd, who only wanted to be a comfortable country lawyer but finds his intelligence and sensitivity mauled in some of the war's most horrific battles.
A puzzling and pointless framing device involving a 1930s WPA slave narrative could have been easily dispensed with, and as with any multi-character saga, some of the storylines are more satisfying than others. But these are minor criticisms. The characters, settings, and battles in Jacob's Ladder are masterfully rendered. The handling of the multi-racial storyline is the best I've seen. Anyone with an interest in the Civil War or historical fiction will find this book a very satisfying read.
March 16, 2006: The Eureka Moment, Part I
When we were doing the research for To the Ends of the Earth, we were searching for the story key that would make the whole plot fall into place. The underlying premise of Ends--to have William Clark discover what befell his friend Meriwether Lewis on the Natchez Trace--was set from the beginning. But it isn't enough to have an idea for a story. A lot of people have ideas for stories. You have to cobble together a plot that actually makes sense. This is by far the hardest part of writing, at least for us!
Very early on, it seemed clear that while Meriwether Lewis had many enemies who wished him dead, the most promising from the novelist's standpoint was General James Wilkinson. After all, Wilkinson is a great forgotten traitor and rascal of American history who had already engineered the downfall of Aaron Burr. Even better, he also had a personal connection to Lewis & Clark, having ruined William Clark's beloved brother, George Rogers Clark, with accusations of drunkenness and misuse of funds that led to his political disfavor and virtual exile. It seemed credible if Meriwether Lewis had gotten in Wilkinson's way, the same thing might have happened to him.
So suppose we start from the premise that Lewis has discovered some damaging information about Wilkinson. An honest man and a poor politician, Lewis doesn't know enough to leave it alone. He's determined to bring the rascal down once and for all.
Sounded good. But two challenges immediately posed themselves. The first challenge was in motivation. The idea required that Lewis -- an ill, depressed, burned-out alcoholic who doesn't care whether he lives or dies -- risk his own career and life to stop Wilkinson. The second challenge was in the plot--what, for God's sake, was this information that is so ill-fired urgent?
If we couldn't solve these challenges, we didn't really have a story. I plunged into research on Wilkinson to try get some ideas. I'll tell how it actually happened in an upcoming post.
March 10, 2006: Cahokia
Here are a few thoughts I had as we turn our thoughts away from BONS and to the final revisions for publication for To the Ends of the Earth. One of the most fun things about the research for Ends was trying to make the characters and places in the story match the historical people and settings as closely as possible. It's a lot more fun to have the characters going about in a real-life setting than simply making something up.
We decided for the opening scene of the novel, we wanted Meriwether Lewis to meet up with James Wilkinson in the village of Cahokia, an old-time French settlement across the river from St. Louis. In 1809, Cahokia was a thriving Indian trading post (not to mention an old Revolutionary War hangout of William Clark's brother, George Rogers Clark).
Cahokia became part of the United States when the U.S. gained the Northwest Territory in the settlement of the Revolutionary War. From 1800-midway through 1809, it was part of the Indiana territory, governed by William Henry Harrison. Sometime in 1809, the growing territory was divided and Cahokia became part of the Illinois territory under governor Ninian Edwards. (Trivia note: Edward's son, also named Ninian, became the brother-in-law and close friend of Abraham Lincoln.)
We wanted Cahokia for the opening scene not only because it was a cool place, but because we could reveal several important things about Lewis there. Lewis is in Cahokia to make some arrangements for his hoped-for bonanza of goods from the St. Louis-Missouri Fur Company, then on its way up the Missouri on the government's dime under the guise of returning to his tribe the Indian chief Big White, who had traveled with Lewis and Clark to the East to meet the "Great Father." After Big White was safely home, the expedition planned to embark on a commercial fur-trading expedition further up the Missouri.
But that's all backstory. The main point is that there was a trading post in Cahokia called Brady's Store, which was a popular watering hole for politicians and luminaries of the day. It seemed like a place that Lewis would know about and happily go there in anticipation of "seeing an old friend."
A great reason to go to Cahokia today is to visit the huge and amazing Indian mounds. More on this in a future post!