The Storytelling Blog is pleased to return from COVID-hiatus long enough to welcome historical fiction author Ed Protzel for a visit. Ed shares some insights into his approach to storytelling through historical fiction.

My Approach to Moving Readers’ Hearts and Minds Through Historical Fiction

With the upcoming release of Something in Madness, the final novel in my Southern historical DarkHorse Trilogy, on Oct. 23, 2020, I couldn’t help reflecting on the drama’s relevance to the social upheaval being shown daily on the news—and, more importantly, its universal themes. 

The trilogy begins with The Lies That Bind in antebellum Mississippi in an imaginary hamlet called Turkle. Then the story moves to Civil War-era Missouri (Honor Among Outcasts), returning to Turkle with Something in Madness during early Reconstruction. Together, the three books address issues of race and gender relevant to that time period. The hamlet of Turkle serves as a microcosm of society at any place or time.

Original Inspiration For Historical Fiction Series

My primary objective in writing the trilogy was to debunk the way Southern literature historically portrayed or ignored the “invisible” people, mainly Blacks and women. These traditional literary stereotypes reflected real-life behaviors and set the cultural stage for what would become Jim Crow and segregation. They also illustrate oppressive policies toward women, elements of which persist to this day. Such diminished views of any segment of society distorts our perception of all people and cheapens our view of humanity itself. Holding up a mirror to such attitudes is where historical fiction is most powerful.

 Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!

I’d always admired the fiction of William Faulkner, especially Absalom, Absalom!, considered one of the great novels of the twentieth century. His novel is set in antebellum Mississippi and finishes just after the Civil War—roughly the time period of my trilogy. As Michael Gorra writes in his new book, The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War (The New York Times, Aug. 25, 2020, review): “Few historians and fewer novelists of [Faulkner’s] day saw the hobbling vainglorious past so clearly, and few of them made slavery so central to their accounts of the war.”

And I agree—up to a point. 

But as much as I love Absalom, Absalom!, which I have read with great pleasure many times over the years, his depictions of Blacks and women always troubled me. Attitudes have changed greatly since the book’s publication in 1936. That change is where my historical fiction series comes in. 

 Problematic Depiction of Slavery in Historical Fiction

For example, the white main character in Absalom, Absalom!, Thomas Sutpen, is emblematic of the Old South’s brutal exploitation of slave labor. Faulkner and the novel’s other characters credit Sutpen for building a great plantation, with barely a mention about his slaves who did the work. In fact, the few descriptions Faulkner does offer of Sutpen’s slaves are cursory and demeaning, used merely to illustrate his dominance over them. 

Of Faulkner’s depictions of Black characters, Gorra writes: “Once again we need to ask what Faulkner isn’t writing here. We need to read for the unspoken, for the stories that peep around the edges of the ones he’s chosen to tell.” 

Women as Victims in Historical Fiction

Furthermore, were all the women of the antebellum South really powerless victims, like Sutpen’s wife, Ellen, and poor Miss Rosa Coldfield, his jilted fiancée? Even Sutpen’s daughter, who Faulkner portrays as promisingly precocious as a youth, seems to lose her spirit when depicted as an adult. To give appropriate credit not only to Blacks and women, but to all who are dismissed as “less than,” I had to turn these perceptions inside-out by attempting to tell their story from their vantage point. Not being Black or female, I had to draw on my own life as a member of two minorities (Jewish and Native American), my Black and female friendships, my study of history and literature, and a heavy dose of imagination.

   The Central Conceit 

The method I used to enable the reader to experience the varied points of view was to establish a central conceit for the trilogy in book one: Often one must live a lie in order to survive in a world built on injustice. 

In The Lies That Bind, a half-white, half-Seminole drifter, Durksen (Durk) Hurst, convinces a group of escaped slaves to form a secret partnership to build their own plantation, DarkHorse. Durk would pose as the Sutpen-like dominant “white master,” taking credit for everything, while Big Josh, who’d run his own master’s plantation, would supervise the operation. (Researchers, including John W. Blassingame, author of The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South, reveal there were slaves who, indeed, ran plantations for their masters.) Yet within their enterprise, the group’s decisions would be based on the soundest ideas put forth, not the proponent’s skin color. The story doesn’t belong solely to Durk, any more than DarkHorse does. 

An Empowered Community, Threatened

Unfortunately, Durk is vainglorious and ambitious, and sometimes half-believes his own inflated reputation, which he perpetrated. With their plantation thriving, Durk gambles to get richer, putting the whole partnership at risk. Dramatically, this leads to continuous conflict within the group, an important element in storytelling. Further, each disagreement contains multifaceted ironies. The reader can see the arguments from varying perspectives and put the ideas generated by the Black and female characters on equal footing with those of the traditional “white legendary master.” 

In one scene, Durk and Big Josh argue over the risks of selling cotton futures:

Now the reason for Durk’s activity at the county seat was clear. The three partners stared at Hurst. 

“The price has been going up, sky high,” Durk said. “I’ve been getting more and more advance for each sale.”

“D-durk,” Big Josh said, “the grapevine says French has been buying. He buying.”

“What, French?” Hurst asked, his face turning red. “Buying?”

“Every b-bale you sold, he bought it,” Josh answered. “He planning to clean us out. W-what if we can’t deliver all the cotton you done promised?”

“Then they’ll…” Unable to speak, Hurst stared at his boots.

“Will they take DarkHorse?” Isaac asked.

   Nuanced Female Characters

Likewise, in breaking traditional Southern literary stereotypes, the women in the DarkHorse Trilogy are shown to be strong and smart. Yet, like the Black characters, they are victims of the prejudices forced upon them by society. To reveal their complexities, the women are as significant to the story as the men, not merely adjunctive to the male-focused storyline. This method gives the drama a fuller, more realistic dimension. 

The brilliant and driven widow, Mrs. French, the story’s most Southern Gothic element, has made herself the richest and most powerful individual in the town. Yet she had to pay a high price to navigate the twisted norms of the antebellum South, which eventually drives her mad. 

Antoinette DuVallier, Durk’s mixed-race love interest, is a formidable, educated woman with acute business acumen who, at her own peril, refuses to be a victim. But she, too, suffers greatly because of society’s rules and unjust laws. 

Here Antoinette warns Durk that war is coming:

“Durk, I’ve done business with men of means and influence of every kind, and I’ve seldom known even the best of them to compromise when pride is at stake. They’d rather doom themselves and everyone around them than change their ways. The whole country will be soaked in blood soon enough to prove that.”

“You mean all this war talk?” Hurst asked. This was another problem down the road that he was attempting to ignore.

“Talk?” Antoinette exclaimed. “The fools are hell-bent to ride on white horses under brave banners, sabers waving and plumes flying, and bring this land to waste and ruin. To drown their fortunes, families, and lives in rivers of blood — and nothing will stop them.”

An Egalitarian Ideal

We know that literature from the past can reflect the prejudices of the times in which it was written, as nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors often did. But historical novels can also accurately portray the common attitudes of the era while at the same time illuminating the dangerous lies within those attitudes. In this way, historical fiction has the power to move hearts and minds — and engender social change. 

The reader of the DarkHorse Trilogy will see a diverse group of individuals evolve from a state of antipathy and suspicion to one of trust. In modern America, as in fictional Turkle, isn’t that what a more perfect union would look like?

Ed Protzel has authored four novels, The Lies That Bind, Honor Among Outcasts, Something in Madness (DarkHorse Trilogy), and The Antiquities Dealer, a sci-fi suspense thriller. A graduate of the University of Missouri-St. Louis with an M.A. in English, Ed lives in St. Louis. Find him at www.edprotzel.com. His novels can be found on Amazon at https://amzn.to/2PTRqnT

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