Number 9: They’re All Quite Plucky

If you hear me using an unusual word, there’s a reason, which comes from these thoughts about the ninth attribute in the list of virtues of the characters in my upcoming book.

Before I get to what might be odd about this, let me cite some specific instances.

An American woman goes to the school where her immigrant friend’s child is a student and confronts the administrators for failing to prevent the bullying this child has suffered.
That child’s mother has previously protected him and his older sisters from their abusive father and has leapt from a fast-moving SUV to flee for her life across a barren desert.
A grandmother incurs a brain injury during a brutal assault but shields her daughter-in-law and little grandchildren from invaders.
Her husband musters up the courage to lead the family home, to rebuild from the ashes of a community and a country heavily damaged by war.
A Palestinian couple, displaced from their hometowns and families, stand up for nonviolent resistance to oppression year after year, decade after decade, throughout their adult lives.

Stories like those told by the characters in From the Lives We Knew may be the best approach to understanding what courage is.

Our household dictionary says the root of the word courage, beneath layers of Middle English, Old French, and Vulgar Latin, is the word for “heart.” Nowadays, people “heart” a place to show affection for it, thanks to clever public relations by New York City some years back. But the phrase “take heart” preceded that meaning. Take heart . . . have courage . . . be brave.

Bravery, in our dictionary, has several synonyms ranging from wild (barbarous) to excellent (bravo) with fearlessness somewhere near the middle.

The word courageous implies consciously drawing on a reserve of inner strength, which is what the mother mentioned above did.
The word fearlessness emphasizes steadfast self-possession, the capacity to rise above one’s fear, which is what the grandfather did in leading his family back to the ruins of their homeland.
The word valiant suggests the particular bravery of a hero or heroine, such as the grandmother who risked her life to protect her grandsons and their mother.

Choosing the most precise word often presents surprising challenges. A writer may choose a word for its rhythm in a paragraph or its tone in the context of the story, rather than its most commonly accepted usage. The dissimilarity of the writer’s and reader’s backgrounds may result in quite different understandings of a word. The most precise word that generally describes the characters in From the Lives We Knew is a word outside my normal vocabulary.

Plucky, according to our dictionary, has the connotation of “showing heart and spirit in the face of unfavorable odds.”

Shoot, I should have discovered this unusual word before I finished writing. By the way, I expect From the Lives We Knew will be ready for you by mid-October. I’m anxious to hear your response to it.