Guest Post: Unequal by Birth by Rosemary J. Kind

Please join me in welcoming Rosemary J. Kind to Let Them Read Books! Rosemary is celebrating the release of Unequal by Birth, Book Two in the Tales of Flynn and Reilly series, and I'm delighted to have her here today with a guest post about the importance of research and accurate historical details in her books!

1866 - Daniel Flynn and Molly Reilly’s lives have been dogged by hardship since their orphan days on the streets of New York. Finally, the future is looking bright and Indiana is the place they call home. Now they can focus on making Cochrane’s Farm a success.

The Civil War might have ended but the battle for Cochrane’s Farm has only just begun. The Reese brothers are incensed that land, once part of their family farm, has been transferred to the ownership of young Molly. No matter that their Daddy had sold it years previously, jealousy and revenge have no regard for right. Women should know their place and this one clearly doesn’t.

Times are changing and a woman’s place is changing with it. How far will Daniel and Molly go to fight injustice and is it a price worth paying?

Amazon  ~  Amazon UK

It's the Little Details

by Rosemary J. Kind

Considering 1860 - 1870 is relatively recent history, there is surprisingly little detail recorded about the town my book is primarily based in. As far as possible, I like to be factually accurate in key details and want to know not only what events took place at the time I’m writing about but the street layout of the town and the nature of the buildings.

Writing about cities tends to be easier as there are official records, which are often accessible to modern readers. However, for Pierceton, Indiana, it has been a more interesting challenge. I have found one key reference source ‘A history of Pierceton Indiana by George A Nye’.

George Nye typed up all he knew about the history in a manuscript dated 1952. He made pen alterations as he found corrected information. Even though he was writing only 90 years after the period I’m covering, he was unable to find residents with memories or family records which went back that far, so detail is scant.

I am sincerely glad to those who have digitised such records and made them available. It has meant I can be sure, in conjunction with maps, of the general layout and the key buildings and businesses at that time. I could also find enough about the post office and key services. The lack of detail makes me feel more confident in taking a little licence for the setting, although even then I find myself apologising to the reader for giving Pierceton a bank branch a few years before there was one in the town.

Some of the social history detail is missing. I wasted very many happy hours (I love research) trying to find out the exact name of the women’s movement in the town as well as in Dowagiac. The best I’ve found was what the main women’s suffrage movements changed their names to a few years later, but not what they changed them from.

My latest challenge is for the novel which follows this one. On what date were the primaries for the elections to the House of Representatives held in 1870? I’m about to email my last remaining hope of finding an answer to that one. I know when the main election was, but not when the list of candidates was finalised. An odd detail, but it’s important to my story.

Much of the same considerations apply to the characters themselves, their clothes, the tools they worked with, their houses. I want the reader to go back in time and be part of the story. I want it to be believable. I don’t write long passages of narrative with considerable description, but I do need to drop in enough images as the story progresses for the reader to build up their own picture. Molly’s clothing working on the farm is heavy cotton, practical, hard wearing and comfortable. She wears an apron over her dress. With another wealthier character I can draw the distinction simply by letting you hear the taffeta rustle as she walks. I don’t need to give you the whole dress design.

Whilst I write in modern English, rather than making the books seem a continuation of the likes of Charles Dickens, it is important to me not to use words that were not in use at the time. I no more want to talk about a teenager than give my characters mobile phones. Little details like that can pull a reader straight out of a story if I get it wrong.

The story itself is fiction, so of course there is some licence, but it is vital to me that it is authentic and believable and I work hard to try to make that the case.

About the Author:

Rosemary J Kind writes because she has to. Failing to stop after the book that everyone has in them, she has published books in both non-fiction and fiction, the latter including novels, humour, short stories and poetry. She regularly produces magazine articles in a number of areas. She has won prizes for both her poetry and short stories.

For 20 years she followed a business career. Seeing her error, she left it behind to write full-time.

She established and ran the short story site Alfie Dog Fiction for 6 years, building it to become one of the largest in the world, representing 300 authors and carrying 1600 short stories. She closed it in order to focus on her own writing.

Her blog, Alfie’s Diary, has been listed as one of the top ten UK Pet Blogs for the last 3 years.

Twitter @therealalfiedog
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/rjkind/
Website www.rjkind.com
Blog www.alfiedog.me.uk