By Suzanne Adair
Readers often
comment that my stories immerse them fully in the fictional world I've created.
Achieving that "You Are Here" feeling is a challenge for most
authors. Those who write historical fiction wish they had a time machine, a way
to experience what the past was like. I write crime fiction set during the
eighteenth century, in the American War of Independence. I've found that time
machine.
When I started
researching this period almost twenty years ago, I quickly realized that if I
intended to create believable fiction about people who'd lived more than two
hundred years earlier, reading books on the topic and interviewing subject
matter experts wouldn't cut it at helping me capture the period flavor. A
desire to experience the everyday challenges my characters would have faced and
how their world smelled, tasted, and sounded fueled my interest in becoming a
Revolutionary War reenactor.
My sons and I
have spent many weekends camped at historical battlegrounds during reenactment
events. We sleep in white canvas army tents with no mosquito screens, and we
dress in clothing made of wool and linen. Our menu is limited by what meals we
can prepare over a wood fire. Food occasionally gets scorched. Most of the
time, running water, flush toilets, and heat or air-conditioning are
unavailable.
I've learned to
start a fire from flint and steel. Not until I'd done so did I comprehend the
impact of natural variables, such as wind and humidity, on establishing a fire
when you don't even have the convenience of matches. Try starting a fire with
flint and steel on a windy, wintry night.
I've also learned
to load and fire a musket with powder only, like the reenactors on the
battlefield. Nothing I'd read prepared me for the noise, weight, heat, or
reload time of the musket. The one time I fired a ball, I saw the way it could
have ricocheted off trees and killed someone. How often did that happen in
woodland skirmishes hundreds of years ago?
And I've learned
to move in a petticoat. However, no reference book prepared me for how quickly
the wind whipped my petticoat into the campfire at one event. Did you know that
being burned was one of the top causes of death for women in the eighteenth
century?
I'm a woman of
the twenty-first century. I take technology for granted. Convenience and
accessibility underpin my culture and shape my values and reactions. But during
the Revolutionary War, very little was convenient or accessible. Danger and
scarcity shaped decisions, especially for the middle and lower classes.
We're out of
touch with the hardships our ancestors endured to stay alive. My challenge is
to bridge that gap in my fiction. The lessons I've learned from reenacting
inform the crafting of my fictional world. Without the experience of having
lived history via the time machine of reenacting, I wouldn't be able to provide
such a believable and captivating escape for readers.
________________________________________________________________
Award-winning
novelist Suzanne Adair is a Florida
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