RE: Day 678: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: wildfires
The story is historical fiction of a current-events type ... convicts fighting wildfires are real, and so was General Robert E. Lee, into whose family and legacy I have grafted both captains inside a fictional but plausible county in Virginia. So too is Rev. Robert Wright Lee IV, a real nephew of the real general, who paid a heavy price in modern Virginia for repudiating the Confederate ideals and the idol-making of his famous uncle -- he is the spiritual elder brother of the two captains. And then, of course, Sherlock Holmes is Captain Hamilton's direct investigative antecedent, while Captain Lee borrows more heavily from Nero Wolfe, with a touch of Hercule Poirot. Captain Hamilton is better in the field, with fresh evidence, but uses modern data handling methods to sort it all out when he can't solve it on the fly -- which he often can, though. Sherlock Holmes meets Watson the computer, in essence, but with a richer home life -- Captain Hamilton has no antecedent in that he has a VERY large family and enjoys a full life with them, and that makes him gentler and more compassionate. Captain Lee IS the computer, loving his piles and piles of data and sending his lieutenants out to bring in more, and, as a widower, having all kinds of time to let his mind crunch and crunch and crunch ... but if he has to come out of his office, then you meet a modern version of his famous uncle, at his most deadly ...
The two captains are best friends, and have worked together for a long time ... here they are out of position, but they don't see themselves as just cogs in the wheel of race-tinted law enforcement. Both are 23-year veterans in Special Forces and JAG: like most of the military veterans I know, they make things happen, as you can read in chapters 9 through 11 of Black, White, and RED All Over (here are parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve, epilogue 1, and epilogue 2 in case you have time). So: in the daily freewrites, I just allow the two characters to explore the world in near-real-time, dealing with the country as we deal with it ... it IS fiction, but there is a PILE of truth behind it...
Hi @deeanndmathews!
What an interesting and complex task you took upon yourself! The difficulty of bringing historical personages to modern time would be, of course, the huge shift in society’s mentality in regards to slavery, equality and civil right. Should General Lee be born in our time he’d never be having the same backward values as he had 200 years ago.
Russia also had slavery just about at the same time starting from roughly in 16 century and abolishing it in 1961 only a year earlier than in the States. Only it didn’t import salves but used “local reserves” their own people. Although abolishment didn’t result in the civil war like it was the United States, it was a hugely debated topic and the tsar eventually did it from purely economic considerations rather than from compassion.
There was an attempt to free the slaves yet in 1926, but it was suppressed and people who wanted to do it was executed or sent to Siberia. Then it is well known what all this lead to – the communist revolution of 1917 and then to Stalin’s regime.
If I were to take a historical person from 1819 and move him or her to 2019 he or she may have the same characters and appearance but would be born in today’s reality and have today’s values.
All that to say is to underline the again the difficulty of your task. I’d like to read it from the beginning though.
I haven't QUITE done a move ...consider the history of the Civil War and several of its most memorable men as a big set of ingredients used to cook up fiction that touches on current events that wrap around the same unresolved issues...
To read it from the beginning ... Captain Hamilton is my #freewrite detective, and so that goes a long way back... this thing really starts with my introducing a new character for him to interact with, and the sizable reaction I got around that interaction from readers here. Captain Lee is more recent, starting in the big story ... so, let me do this: Captain Hamilton alone is best represented in "Death at the Pool", and this contains links to key freewrites to understand the Tinyville captain and the space he lives in. After that, enjoy Black, White, and RED All Over -- here are parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, and twelve, epilogue 1, and epilogue 2.
I will read all your episodes as time will permit. I just commented on the gravity of the load that you've understood. You are a brave person!
Why thank you, @mgaft1!