A recent post by author Amy B Cohen discussed family history as inspiration for her novels. That prompted me to look at other posts on A Writer of History with a similar theme. Turns out that there are several!
For example, Jane Johnson wrote The Sultan’s Wife based on “a piece of family history – that an ancestor (Catherine Tregenna) had been abducted in the 17th century from the Cornish coast by Barbary pirates and sold into the white slave trade in Morocco. Now that’s an intriguing – one might say barbaric – bit of inspiration! And, by the way, the Sultan’s Wife is a wonderful novel.
David O. Stewart has written a few novels based on his mother’s family coming to America. According to David: “Writers are magpies of experience. Whatever we seem to be doing, we also are gathering material: ideas, events, settings, phrases, facial expressions, actions, and feelings.” But, “the risks of such scavenging rise dramatically if the source is family. Family members know things that others don’t. Family members are more likely to remember at least their version of an event. They’re (at least slightly) more likely to read what you write. And the cost of offending them can be high. I endorsed David’s first novel in the series – The New Land – as “an engrossing saga of hope, determination, and bravery“.
Lynette Mcdermott, an Australian author, wrote the Garth Trilogy based on the story of how her ancestors came to Australia. “We had no idea we were descended from a convict, no wonder my grandmother had been so tight-lipped about revealing the family’s past. Then we discovered that not only were we related to this one convict but to three others!” As they say: “Who knew?”
Author Elizabeth St. John has written several novels based on her family history: “Growing up in England within a family that celebrated history and spent more time researching dead ancestors than talking to living relatives, it was crucial that my fiction writing be informed by fact. I also wanted my readers to feel the same thrill of connecting with the past that I do, and to meet and understand my family and their lives as if the centuries did not separate us.” The first of these novels is By Love Divided – fabulous novel – the story of Elizabeth’s ancestor Lucy St. John who lived in the Tower of London as Mistress of the Tower.
Theresa Hupp used her family history to write novels featuring wagon train migrations on the Oregon Trail. Theresa was inspired by the question of “What propelled men and women to leave their homes and trek two-thousand miles to an unsettled wilderness?”
In writing his recent historical novel The Helots’ Tale, author David Cairns also discovered inspiration close to home through his wife’s family history. David offered this quote: “Without the past there is no present, nor can we build a future.”
Author Lise Mayne has two novels to her credit – Becoming Sand and Time Enough. Lise said that writing novels featuring family history is “a tricky business”. One piece of advice from Lise: “Write with care, respect, and most of all, love. Your intuition will tell you what to leave out or change.”
Author Shira Dest came across the Georgetown Slavery Archive while researching her family history, much of which is from southern Maryland. Shira wrote in her post: “imagining how my 5xs great grandmother might have felt as she saved up her earnings as a dress-maker in Charleston, SC in order to purchase her freedom, helped me imagine the feelings of both Isaias and Willow”.
Writing on Jane Friedman’s site, author Lindsay Marie Morris offers some advice on writing based on family history:
- Start with what you know
- Research what you don’t know
- Talk to the people who were there (if they’re still alive)
- Build characters from real people
- Use history as your scaffolding
- Blend fact and imagination with care
My first novel – Unravelled – used the skeleton of my maternal grandparents lives to help structure the novel. I could also hear their voices in my head which was a real gift in creating their fictional characters. In addition, I had my grandfather’s war mementos contained in two large binders and a large box plus various photos of him from both WWI and WWII to inspire me.
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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel THAT WAS THEN is a contemporary thriller. Mary’s other novels, THE ADMIRAL’S WIFE, PARIS IN RUINS, TIME AND REGRET, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, Google Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on Facebook or on her website www.mktod.com.
