Researching HIDING EZRA
When my husband first told me the tale of his grandfather's incredible adventures during WWI, I thought, I don't even know what that war was about. In school, we study the Civil War--crazy but clear--and World War II with its 2 fronts--crazy but clear--but WWI? It seemed a very complex war, more irrational than the other two, if that makes any sense. And I couldn't recall anything really about the time period except the big flu epidemic. I did remember that from history class.
When I decided I was going to try to write a novel that was built around the basic true story of my husband's grandfather deciding that his family needed him a lot worse than the Army did, I could find nothing in the library to help me understand his predicament or the times he lived in. I did read some books and articles about the war, and also specifically about the flu epidemic, but I found nothing about deserters, nothing about the reaction of real people here at home in southwestern Virginia, nothing about what challenges the the first modern draft presented. So I knew I was going to have to find out what I needed to know some other way.
So I began to look for newspaper accounts of the day. I ended up spending 4 summers--when I was out of school--squirreled away in local libraries readings newspaper accounts of that time. I read the KINGSPORT TIMES NEWS, the BRISTOL HERALD-COURIER, the Scott County, VA paper, and several coalfield papers, starting from the summer of 1918 all the way through to the fall of 1922. Every day's paper, cover to cover. On microfilm. Now you see why it took four years.
But then I was ready to write HIDING EZRA, having come to understand that my husband's grandfather was part of a huge sociological phenomenon-175,000 men that went AWOL for similar reasons--and that incredible events besides the flu epidemic were occurring: a coal strike, a wheat shortage, the coldest winter in decades....History came alive, as sharp and clear and real as my own life, and I had to make others see it, too, with new eyes, to understand what incredible hardship had occurred in this forgotten and often overlooked war. It is the story of thousands of families-a story that had to be told.
When I decided I was going to try to write a novel that was built around the basic true story of my husband's grandfather deciding that his family needed him a lot worse than the Army did, I could find nothing in the library to help me understand his predicament or the times he lived in. I did read some books and articles about the war, and also specifically about the flu epidemic, but I found nothing about deserters, nothing about the reaction of real people here at home in southwestern Virginia, nothing about what challenges the the first modern draft presented. So I knew I was going to have to find out what I needed to know some other way.
So I began to look for newspaper accounts of the day. I ended up spending 4 summers--when I was out of school--squirreled away in local libraries readings newspaper accounts of that time. I read the KINGSPORT TIMES NEWS, the BRISTOL HERALD-COURIER, the Scott County, VA paper, and several coalfield papers, starting from the summer of 1918 all the way through to the fall of 1922. Every day's paper, cover to cover. On microfilm. Now you see why it took four years.
But then I was ready to write HIDING EZRA, having come to understand that my husband's grandfather was part of a huge sociological phenomenon-175,000 men that went AWOL for similar reasons--and that incredible events besides the flu epidemic were occurring: a coal strike, a wheat shortage, the coldest winter in decades....History came alive, as sharp and clear and real as my own life, and I had to make others see it, too, with new eyes, to understand what incredible hardship had occurred in this forgotten and often overlooked war. It is the story of thousands of families-a story that had to be told.
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Jo
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Apr 11, 2014 09:11AM
This is such a beautiful book. I couldn't put it down. All those summers of research certainly enabled Rita Quillen to take us back to that time and bring that history alive.
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I met a woman at a reading who told me about her family's story of a WWI deserter. He was caught, court-martialed and executed! I had read of that, but this is the first time I've run into one of their descendants. The government figured out pretty quickly that executing 170,000+ was not feasible, but not before some paid this terrible price.
Jo wrote: "This is such a beautiful book. I couldn't put it down. All those summers of research certainly enabled Rita Quillen to take us back to that time and bring that history alive."Thanks so much, Jo-you don't know how much I appreciate that!
