Frances Hunter

blog of the author To the Ends of the Earth

 

Frances Hunter's Journal
April 2008

Winner, Violet Crown Award for Fiction

Silver Medal Winner, Independent Publisher Book Awards

Finalist, Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Awards

 

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April 30, 2008: The Solemn Pride that Must Be Yours

First of all, thanks for all those who came out for the book signing on Saturday at Book People in Austin! We had a super turnout and great questions. It was a real pleasure for us and we're honored that so many people made us part of their Saturday.

I was thinking some this weekend about the truly extraordinary service of the Clark family for the United States. All five of William Clark's older brothers fought in the American Revolution. Three brothers -- Jonathan, Johnny, and Edmund -- fought in the east, and all three were captured and endured the suffering of prisoners of war. In the west, George Rogers Clark led the legendary campaign against the British and the Indians, and his younger brother Dick eventually joined up and served under him.

It's easy to imagine the hero worship that William, born in 1770 and thus too young to serve, must have felt for these remarkable brothers. Fortunately, for most of us, it's less easy to imagine the sorrow that he and his family must have felt when two of the brothers died just as the war was ending.

Johnny Clark, born 1757, joined the Continental Army in 1777 and fought in the defense of Pennsylvania at Brandywine and Germantown. The latter was a terrible defeat for George Washington's army, and young Clark was one of 400 men taken prisoner.

What followed was an ordeal that rivaled that endured by modern-day POWs like John McCain and Jeremiah Denton. Clark and the others were taken to New York, where they were crowded aboard old, damaged, or obsolete ships that were anchored in the harbor at the site of the modern-day Brooklyn Navy Yard. These "hulks" became hell ships in which incredible suffering took place due to a British policy of intentional neglect. It's thought that Johnny Clark was aboard the most notorious of the ships, the HMS Jersey.

What Johnny Clark and his fellow POWs endured beggars belief, but is well-documented by contemporary accounts. They were confined below decks, issued scant rations of spoiled food, and given no medical attention. Smallpox, yellow fever, and dystentery ran rampant through the starving men. The men soon became used to the morning cry from their captors, "Rebels, turn out your dead." Some eight men a day died aboard the Jersey; the bodies were desecrated by being tossed overboard or into shallow graves where they could be dug out by animals. Some estimates suggest that as many as 8,000 Americans died as British prisoners of war--about the same as those who lost their lives in battle.

Johnny Clark was one of those who survived, somehow enduring his his four-year stint on the Jersey. In 1782, as the war was coming to a close, he was exchanged and allowed to return home to his family. He must have looked like a living corpse to those who remembered him as their 20-year-old son who marched to war.

There would be no happy ending for Johnny. He died a year later of tuberculosis and was buried at the old Clark family farm in Caroline County, Virginia. Just two weeks later, the Clarks left for their long-awaited move to Kentucky. Obviously they were waiting for Johnny to pass. William was 14 at the time.

And while George Rogers, the founder of Louisville, and older brother Jonathan had gone ahead to build the new family homestead that would become known as Mulberry Hill, there would be another vacant chair at the table. Richard Clark, or "Dickie" as he was known in the family, had vanished without a trace while on a journey from Louisville to one of the western outposts. The Clarks searched for Dick in vain, and while they found his horse on the banks of the White River in present-day Indiana, no trace of Dick was ever found. Because the horse was found, robbery or Indian attack seems unlikely, and Dick probably drowned trying to cross a flooded river. The thought that Dick might still be alive tormented the Clarks for many years.

These sacrifices put me in mind of Abraham Lincoln's famous words to a mother who lost five sons in the Civil War: "the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom."

A thorough article about the treatment of American prisoners of war by the British in the American Revolution can be found at the Early America Review.

Prison Ship Martys Monument in New York

Recent blog post about the renovation of the monument, with pictures

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April 16, 2008: Taverns in Early America

In working on our current work-in-progress, I was put in mind of just how much time men in early America spent in taverns. There are multiple tavern scenes as well in To the Ends of the Earth, such as this one at Tom Brady's dive in Cahokia, Illinois:

“Evening, Tom.” Lewis took off his black beaver hat, ducked his head, and stepped through the narrow doorway into the cool darkness of the tavern. The place reeked of the comforting smells of hard liquor, tobacco smoke, and men’s sweat. Tom Brady rushed up to him, his florid face beaming.

“Gov’ner Lewis! An honor, sar! Yer looking fine, ye are!” The big Irishman grabbed his hand and wrung it heartily.

“Easy, Brady, you’ll have it off.” Lewis smiled and extricated his hand from Brady’s powerful grip. “How have you been? Business is good, I see.”

Brady nodded and grinned at the dozen or so men who crowded around crude wooden tables in the sputtering light of oil lamps, drinking and laughing over their card games. “Always good in the summer, sar. A stiff drink makes ye immune from the muskeetors.”

***

It turns out that taverns in early America were much more than bars "where everybody knows your name." In this era before restaurants or hotels, taverns were often the only places where a man could buy a meal or find a place to crash. In small towns and on the frontier, taverns were the nerve center in which men met and exchanged news and information. In addition, most men worked out of their homes and there was as yet no public infrastructure; taverns were often the only places to transact business, hold public meetings, even muster the militia.

As a result, men like Tom Brady in Cahokia or William Christy across the river in St. Louis were much more than bar owners; they were men of consequence in the community.

The classic early American tavern, it is important to note, was a place where men of all social classes rubbed elbows, but in bigger communities it didn't take long for class consciousness to take hold. Then as now, a tavern could make itself exclusive by offering a fine selection of wine and liquor and a good quality bill of fare, all at prices that would exclude the common herd. For example, Christy's Eagle Tavern in St. Louis presents a much more elegant scene:

William Christy’s Eagle Tavern was where all the prominent gentlemen of St. Louis came to relax. The tavern was located in the old Spanish Governor’s Palace, and Christy prided himself on maintaining the palatial atmosphere. On Saturday nights, men who spent all week on sedate and serious business tossed off their sobriety and crowded around the polished wooden tables for cards and conversation, eating their dinner off china plates and pouring their whiskey from crystal decanters. The huge mahogany bar, brought piece by piece from the East, gleamed under the lamps.

It was always a festive time, but tonight the atmosphere in the taproom was positively electric. It was always something to see when Governor Lewis decided to put on a show.

About fifty men were crowded into the room, laughing and shouting. “You tell ’em, Governor, you tell ’em!” someone yelled from the front of a crowd, which squeezed around the bar to get the round of free drinks Lewis had just bought for the house.

***

So which is your kind of place -- Christy's or Brady's? Or does it depend on the day?

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April 7, 2008: New Review in Roundup!

We received a wonderful new review in Roundup, the magazine of the Western Writers of America. We're thrilled! Check it out:

Untangling the mysterious death of one of history's most celebrated explorers, Meriwether Lewis, has occupied historians since the Voyage of Discovery. Frances Hunter's stunning, award-winning novel, To the Ends of the Earth, combines meticulous research with a fast-paced narrative based on intriguing speculation into the motives of durable historical characters. Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and James Wilkinson come to life in this extremely skillful novel as Lewis sets off to deliver to President Thomas Jefferson all the material gathered on his and Clark's seminal voyage. A collection of rogues, some working at cross-purposes, are bent on stopping him.

Parallel to the reader's anxiety for Lewis's safety is a developing dread that the precious documents of Lewis and Clark's historic exploration will be lost forever. Realistically, one knows for a fact they were preserved, but Hunter achieves that elusive goal for all novelists--that the reader suspends disbelief. Hunter teases the reader with the implications of the destruction of the entire collection of papers.

WWA members should take note of Hunter's fine technique for creating compelling historical fiction without research paralyzing the story. To the Ends of the Earth lends an incredible sense of authenticity to characters and circumstances; readers will be convinced just such words were spoken and every scene actually occurred.

To the Ends of the Earth won the Writers' League of Texas 2007 Violet Crown Award and a silver medal for historical fiction in the 2007 Independent Publisher "IPPY" Book Awards.

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