The Inspirations That Led to "Brookhaven"

Brookhaven has made its historical novel debut. Publication happened faster than I anticipated; I thought maybe by sometime in late January. It was a surprise to receive a message from the publisher last Thursday with the link to Amazon Kindle, followed by the paperback on Friday. 

Like all stories, Brookhaven has its seeds, some going back more than 60 years. Some of those seeds are movies.

 

The children in our family are spread widely apart; my older brother is eight years older, and my younger brother is 10 years younger. For a decade, I was the little kid in the family. And because my father wasn’t a fan of movies, and my mother was a Hollywood director’s dream of a fan, I became my mother’s movie partner. We saw the Disney movies, of course, but we also saw a lot of others, including some that weren’t exactly the best viewing for a child.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Monday Readings

 

Saints Alive in Books and Memory – A.C.S. Bird at Story Warren.

 

Italo Calvino and Magic Books – Barb Drummond, Curious Historian. 

 

What happened to relics of Syria’s Jewish history? Assad’s collapse suprs efforts to assess damage – Shira Li Bartov/JTA at The Jerusalem Post. 

 

What I See: Go on Shepherd & Lamb – Sam Kee at The Color of Dust.

 

Pause – poem by Kelly Belmonte at Kelly’s Scribbles.

My Enchantment with (Addiction to?) the Civil War

My enchantment with, or addiction to reading about, the Civil War has deep roots that go back to early childhood. And it came through both sides of my family. 

From my mother came the romance. If you had asked her, at any time of her life, what her favorite movie was, you would have received the consistent answer of Gone with the Wind. She was 16 when she first saw the movie. I don’t know how many times she watched it, especially after it became a regular staple of television. But the story of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, set against the backdrop of the Civil War and its aftermath, captured my mother’s romantic heart.

 

The novel by Margaret Mitchell won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. The movie passed into American film legend, and my mother knew all the details, like how the directors searched long and hard for an actress to play Scarlett. Filming had started (like with the scene depicting the burning of Atlanta) when they finally decided on Vivien Leigh. And my mother adored Clark Gable, talking about him long after his death in 1960.

To continue reading, please see me post today at Dancing Priest.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

Remembering the Old Ones – Brian Miller at A South Roane Agrarian. 

 

Shrouded Veterans: Col. Ignatz Kappner – Frank Jastrzembski at Emerging Civil War. 

 

Historic Shots at the End and the Beginning – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

Grierson's Raid and "The Horse Soldiers"

After I started elementary school, I became the movie partner of my mother. My father rarely went to the movies; my mother had been starstruck since she was a child. During the summer months, and on weekends during the school year, I accompanied her to one of the big theaters in downtown New Orleans to watch the latest movie she was interested in. We started with the Disney films – my earliest remembered movie is Bambi, the 1942 film which I would have seen via re-release in 1956 or 1957. 

My most vivid memory was going to the Saenger Theatre on Canal Street to see The Last Voyage, starring Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone. Released in 1959, it was a tension-filled story about a passenger liner sinking in the Pacific, with rescue boats too far away to reach it before it sank. I cried through most of the movie. My mother felt so bad for taking me to see what was an adult-themed movie that, when it ended, she took me across Canal Street to see Some Like It Hot at the Joy Theatre. It was certainly funny, but it was even more adult-themed than The Last Voyage. 

 

That same year, she took me to see The Horse Soldiers, a Civil War epic starring John Wayne and William Holden. (She liked John Wayne, but William Holden was one of her three favorite actors, with Robert Stack and Clark Gable rounding out the list.) The movie was based upon a 1956 historical novel of the same name by Harold Sinclair. The book itself was based upon a true story generally referred to as “Grierson’s Raid.” 

To continue reading, please see my post today at Dancing Priest.