Its a wonderful cool fall day here.. with cloudy skies and drizzling rain.. the perfect day to curl up with a good book! My favorite kind of book is "HISTORICAL FICTION". Last night I started a new "historical fiction" book titled "THE GOOD JOURNEY" by Micaela Gilchrist. Historical fiction novels are just that.. part true history and part fiction. Authors might take a period in history ( in this case 1820's and 1830's) and then make up characters who live during a historical time of our history. Others take real people that they discover in history and do endless years of research to track down all the information they can about these people through countless letters and documented information. Plot turns are sometimes based in fact and sometimes fiction as well.
Micaela Gilchrist explains in her pre book analysis that "As a novelist, I could venture into places where historians could not go and I could take the reader with me. We could meet in the General's tent before battle, and I could whisper to the reader to take notice of the color of the General's cheek as he raged against his political enemy Lewis Cass. Quietly and discreetly, you and I could tiptoe in to the Genral's bedchamber and breathe in the smell of the soap lather on the cloth as his widow bathes his body for burial. My job as the novelist is to be your guide through the territory, rending open a vanished world so that for a few hours at least, you can inhabit the commanding general's house on the banks fo the Mississippi river in the early part of the nineteenth century."
Oh wow! that is exactly what I want from a book.. to be transformed back in history to a time in the history of our America when things were different, not easy, and now a part of our heritage. But also not be consumed by facts to the point of boredom. To be tranformed back in time............ahhh... I must go now and curl up with my new book!
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