A Dilemma

There's an interesting blog post HERE by another author who has written of another sad part of Madison County's history. (See the post for more details.)

He gives CROWS a nice review--very nice--but I was struck by one comment" "Still, several characters’ casual use of the N-word, while historically accurate to the time period and the Southern Appalachians, is still jarring. One character, in East Tennessee, a Quaker abolitionist involved in the Underground Railroad, reproves her sweetheart, telling him she “can’t abide that word.” 

"At the time, Democrats routinely referred to their adversaries as “black Republicans,” despite the fact that there were few slaves and fewer free people of color in the county. It is still jarring to hear the N-word used today in Madison County, where there are still few African Americans to be found. "

I think I understand--and I did agonize a bit over the use of that word (though not over 'Black Republican' as I was quoting from primary sources.) 

What's a writer to do when writing about a politically incorrect time? The war was horrible--and I wrote about it. Ditto the Massacre and the torture of the women. I put vulgar language into the speech of some of the characters, feeling that it represented the time and situation and characters. And I used the N-word--sparingly but as I thought the characters would have used it.

Balancing historical accuracy with modern sensibility isn't easy. And the fact that I'm White means that I can never truly understand what any given Black reader might feel on reading that word.

It's a dilemma.

Met Her on the Mountain

I met Mark Pinsky back in May of '09 and blogged about him and his quest HERE.  The unsolved murder of the Vista worker was one of the first things we heard about when we came to Madison County and we listened to, over the years, a number of speculations as to what actually happened.

Mark has been obsessed with the story from the beginning and now he's written a book about it -- a compelling and convincing narrative. As well as answering the questions about the murder, Mark delves into the small town politics and the mindset that made it possible for the murderers to escape justice -- the 'them versus us' mentality that plagues most of mankind in one way or another.

Met Her on the Mountain will be on sale October 1.  It's a fascinating read, especially for those of us who know and love this area.  But, as in  all good writing, the personal becomes universal; the local becomes global.  This isn't an especially Appalachian crime -- one sees similar inhumanity and similar miscarriages of justice everywhere. Parallels will probably occur to you

Mark's web site has more information about the book.  (I am obliged to mention that the publishers sent me a copy, hoping for a review. But I wouldn't have reviewed it if I hadn't liked it.)

 

Cold Case

In the summer of 1973, John and I, with our not-quite year-old son, went looking for a place to live that wasn't Florida. On our way north, though our heads were filled with visions of cheap land in New York state or even Canada, we stopped to visit a friend of mine from college.

She and her husband had recently moved to a mountain farm in western North Carolina and, as I hadn't seen her in over 10 years, the opportunity was too good to miss.

On our first night in North Carolina, John went with my friend's husband and his two brothers to a little music festival in a place called Sodom. (We women stayed home with the babies.) John told me later about his first introduction to the county that was to become our home -- the matter of fact way in which his host put a pint bottle of whiskey in one overall pocket and a pistol in the other and the way the car swerved around the narrow road that wound its way over Lonesome Mountain -- where the VISTA worker was murdered, as one brother told him.

The 1970 murder of VISTA worker Nancy Morgan was still a hot topic when we moved to the mountains in 1975. And it was still unsolved. Local opinion seemed to be that she had been killed by another outsider -- in fact, in 1985, a fellow VISTA worker was tried and acquitted.

Outsiders, on the other hand, tended to believe that it was the work of a local person or persons and that the sheriff's department knew more than they were saying.

Almost forty years later, the murder is still unsolved. But Mark Pinsky is on the case.

Mark came to visit me yesterday -- I was the last stop on his Columbo "Just one more question" tour of our county. Mark has been interested in the case since the beginning -- and over the years has visited the area to ask questions of all sorts of people, following facts as well as the elusive hints and allegations. He's working on a book about the case and is in the final stages -- trying to wrap up all the loose ends and be sure that he's learned as much as possible from anyone who knows anything about the matter.

I'm not one of those -- I know nothing -- but I've also been interested in the case because it was the basis of the subplot so recently removed from Miss Birdie's book. I called the murdered woman 'The Do Good Girl' and came up with what I thought was a pretty good answer to the whodunnit question.

Since I'm writing fiction, the real murder is only a springboard for my imagination. I've changed lots of details and purposely not read a lot about the actual case. Two remarks -- one made by a local man about 33 years ago, the other, heard more recently -- were enough for me to spin a tale of 'what if . . .'

I'm hopeful that I'll get to tell my Marshall County version in a later Elizabeth book.