I’m only two days into my break and having to do a lot of household and yard chores that have connected me to the difficult work of the 19th century. When we think about Abrham Lincoln, it is easy to picture speeches, debates, and history-changing decisions. Yet Lincoln came from a deeply physical worked–one shaped by labor, weather, land and exhaustion.
The Midwest of Lincoln’s time was not abstract. It was fences to mend, wood to split, fields to clear, mud roads, river towns, heat, cold, and long physical days. Even people deeply engaged with ideas and politics still lived within that demanding physical reality. I thought about that I was cutting grass and pulling weeds. Historical fiction can sometimes drift too far into ideas alone, but real lives are always grounded in ordinary physical experience. People worried about crops, weather, repairs, Illness, and daily labor even while larger national tensions gathered around them.
The world surrounding the events in Alton was not made up only of speeches and newspapers. it was also made up of warehouses, muddy streets, riverboats, laborers, and people trying to manage ordinary life while the country itself was becoming increasingly unstable. I try to show this in my novel.
Current projects:
- My book: revising chapters, both forward and backward this week.
- Edward Bryant: continuing to review stories for future publication. Hopefully more on this soon.
History was lived in an everyday world, through body as much as ideas.
Thanks for reading and walking alongside me.
The View From The Imaginarium 