If I Could Turn Back Time
Few authors know where to expect inspiration, but that’s only part of the excitement of our profession. So is venturing into unknown territory. Despite being a fan of George Orwell’s The Time Machine, Jack Finney’s Time and Again and Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, I never considered writing time travel because the market was lopsided with poorly written, badly plotted stories about some woman getting hit on the head and waking up to discover she’s Cleopatra. Such books had, to quote Dorothy Parker, all “the depth and glitter of a worn dime.” My reluctance changed some years ago when I lived in the French Quarter, and did something as innocuous as going onto my gallery one warm winter evening to enjoy a glass of wine. I wasn’t there long when fog began...
Read MoreNot a Black and/or White Issue
It’s another of history’s dirty little secrets. While black slavery in this country is well documented, there is little said about its white counterpart. If mentioned at all, white slavery usually masquerades under the broad labels of “indentured servitude” and the “convict trade.” (The word “slave” originally referred to the Slavs of Eastern Europe who were in bondage off and on for centuries.) Gypsies and the Chinese were also victims of forced labor in this country, and the rarely acknowledged enslavement of California’s Mission Indians by the Spanish padres was the subject of my book, Communion of Sinners. Our historians’ biased insistence on ignoring this ugly reality deserves to be rectified. In the 1600s,...
Read MoreRebel with a Cause
William Bruce Mumford was an unlikely candidate for martyrdom. A native of North Carolina, he fought with honor in the Seminole and Mexican-American wars and, like many men from small Dixie towns, sought his fortune in the big city. When he discovered a knack for card games, he became a regular in the New Orleans gambling houses and found further success on the Mississippi River steamboats. Like the vast majority of Southerners, seventy five percent in fact, Mumford did not own slaves, nor did he champion the region’s “peculiar institution.” He wasn’t even particularly political, but when his beloved South and her Queen City were threatened by civil war, Mumford rushed to embrace the Confederate cause. His fierce loyalty would have terrible consequences. In...
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