That’s the thing about historical fiction. How do readers know what’s real and what isn’t? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe most readers just want a flavor of the times. Or maybe a few of them, like me, get curious about where fact ends and fiction begins.
Take the scene from Blue Thread where Miriam and her friends are waiting for national suffragist Anna Howard Shaw to arrive for a rally in Portland. Did Anna Shaw really come to Portland then? Yup. By train? Yes, indeed. From Pendleton? Sure thing. Shaw had attended the Pendleton Round-Up and, by all accounts, had a whopping good time.
Then we get to this part in the book:
Nils came huffing back and reported, ‘The train from Pendleton is late. At least another hour, maybe two. There’s nasty weather in the Gorge.’
Fact? Fiction? That paragraph is a bit of both. Nils is a fictional character. And the nasty weather in the Columbia River Gorge is my reason behind this sentence, which I discovered in an article about Shaw’s visit on page 16 of the Morning Oregonian for September 29, 1912:
There you have it. Before Blue Thread, I wrote ten nonfiction books that kept me thigh high in history for years and years. I’m a sucker for details.
My name is Ruth. I write books and articles for children and young adults. Blue Thread is my eleventh book, and the first one in which I have knowingly stretched the truth.