A Fortunate Diversion
Hi friends and happy Monday! I’m super excited to have my friend and fellow author, Kelly Goshorn, back today. I know you’ll love her post. Kelly is graciously giving away a copy of Across the Shores novella collection to a U.S. resident only. To enter, just drop a comment below.
Rabbit trails.
I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent researching for my historical novels, but I can tell you that at least half that time is spent on, yep, you guessed it, rabbit trails. Historical tidbits that call my name even though they have little, if anything, to do with the story I’m writing.
Such was the case when I began researching my recent release, The Veil. I had intended to set the story in Loudoun County, Virginia, where I live, and the location for several of my other stories. My heroine, Caroline Wilkins, was in the wind and planned to board a steamer from the Port of Baltimore to Southampton, England, where she hoped to find refuge in her aunt’s home. As I Googled in search of departure schedules, ticket prices, and the duration of said voyage from Baltimore in the late 1870s, the top search results were for the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, an event I’d not heard of.
After more than a dozen failed attempts to find the information I was seeking, curiosity begged me to satisfy my inner history nerd girl and I delved into article after article about the events in Baltimore in July 1877. Before I knew it, I’d spent hours learning about this strike that began in Hagerstown, Maryland, and quickly spread along the rails to Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and St. Louis disrupting rail traffic, seizing control of train stations, and vandalizing property.
Something clicked. Before long, I began reworking the beginning of my story to incorporate these events. Poor, unsuspecting Caroline would now be forced to disembark her train when strikers block the tracks before she reaches Camden Station. Not long after, she’s caught up in a peaceful protest that suddenly turns violent.
Enter the hero. Initially, a merchant picking up goods for his shop in Virginia, it made more sense for him to live in Baltimore so when he rescues Caroline from being trampled by the angry mob, he is able to take her to his family’s home. Further research led me to discover that German immigrants were a huge part of Baltimore’s cultural landscape at that time and comprised nearly 60% of all immigrants in the city. With my unwitting consent, Charles Morgan morphed into Franz Köhler whose noble heart and German heritage seeped onto the pages—Jägerschnitzel, lederhosen, and the polka.
I can’t imagine my story without Franz, my German railyard worker with a romantic soul and broken English, who harbors a secret dream of carving ornate Bavarian cuckoo clocks. Or the scene where he entices Caroline to learn to polka, or his Opa, Franz’s grandfather, teaches Caroline to make the Gugelhupf, Franz’s favorite dessert.
And none of it would have come about without an unforeseen detour down a rabbit trail.
What rabbit trail has recently stolen your attention from the task at hand?
