Category:

Of Palaces and Drummer boys

2/23/2022

An old post card of the Palace of the Governors, It has looked similar throughout its 400 year history.

I don’t think any other state in the United States has a history museum that’s quite as storied as the one in New Mexico. Housed in a building called The Palace of the Governors, it is the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States.

The Palace of the Governors was built in 1610, soon after the King of Spain appointed Pedro de Peralta to be the governor of New Mexico. The territory covered most of the American Southwest. Including what is now the states of Texas, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico.
In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain and the Palace became the center of administration for the province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México.

It became New Mexico's first territorial capitol on August 14,1846, when General Stephen W. Kearny rode his troops into Santa Fe during the Mexican American War. He claimed the New Mexico Territory for the United States without a shot being fired.

The museum houses artifacts dating back to man’s first entrance into the land, thousands of years ago, and it houses artifacts from recent history. These artifacts inspire museum goers to think about what New Mexico was like in the past. One of the artifacts on display, this snare drum, helps inform viewers about the Civil War in New Mexico. During the Civil War, drums were important for giving commands on the battlefield, and drummers were required to learn a standardized system of marches and signals. As the label indicates, this one was found in the Pecos River about a decade after the Battle of Glorieta Pass.

Willie, the Confederate Drummer Boy in my novel Where Duty Calls, would have carried a drum similar to this one. Willie is a fictional character, but this is exactly what I think he looked like: small and dark eyed, with a pale, round face. He drummed (at least in my story) during the charge at the Battle of Valverde in which the Confederate forces overtook the Union artillery position commanded by Captain Alexander McRae.

Although most drummers were actually adult men, some drummers were children. Some, like John Lincoln Clem, known by the nickname of Johnny Shiloh, ran away to join the army. Clem was only nine years old when he became a drummer boy. He continued in the Army, coming the youngest noncomissioned officer in history and retiring in 1915 as a brigadier general.

Other boys who served as drummer boys were the sons of soldiers serving in the same unit. Still others, like my Willie, were orphans. An orphan from Louisianna, Willie would have joined the army to be fed and clothed, and to have a sense of belonging. Like many of the boys who joined young, Willie became a kind of mascot for the men, who made sure that he was taken care of.

We Willie the drummer is one of the characters in Jennifer Bohnhoff's trilogy of middle grade novels, Rebels Along the Rio Grande. The first novel,WhereDutyCalls was released in June 2022 by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing. Book 2, The Worst Enemy, will come out in August 2023 and can be preordered here. Book 3, The Famished Country, will be released in 2024.

You can contact Ms. Bohnhoff at [email protected]

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A General with a Plan

2/22/2022

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Jemmy and his home, as depicted by illustrator Ian Barstow

The main character Where Duty Calls, my Civil War novel set in New Mexico, is Jemmy Martin, a gentle farm boy from San Antonio, Texas. Jemmy loves his humble home and his family, but has a very special relationship with the farm animals, especially the two mules.

Jemmy's brother, Drew, is a little flightier. When Drew sneaks into town to join the Confederate army, Jemmy is tasked with finding him and bringing him back. While he is in town, a group of riders passes, and Jemmy is impressed:

"At their center was a fine-looking man with silver hair that caught the morning sun and made him look as if a halo circled his head. He had a great, bushy mustache, sideburns, and sad, drooping eyes that made Jemmy feel as if this man had seen all the sorrow the world had to offer and had learned how to push through it. Jemmy instantly felt as if he could follow the man anywhere."

The fine-looking man that had impressed Jemmy so well was Confederate Brigadier General Henry H. Sibley, and while Jemmy Martin is a figment of my imagination, General Sibley was a real person who impressed many. Several contemporary records attest to his natural charisma and ability to inspire people with his words.

The coat of arms of the 2nd Dragoons

Henry Hopkins Sibley' came from a family that had served the United States since its inception. His grandfather, Dr. John Sibley, was a medical assistant in the Revolutionary War. When the war was over, he continued his training and became a surgeon. In 1803, after the United States bought the Louisiana Purchase, he left his native Massachusetts and joined an expedition to the Red River country of western Louisiana. He liked the new territory so well that he moved to Natchitoches, Louisiana, where he worked as a contract surgeon and was an Indian Agent for New Orleans. John Sibley also served as a Senator in the Louisiana State Senate, and was a colonel in the local militia, a cattle farmer, a cotton planter, and a salt manufacturer. His son Samuel Sibley served as a parish clerk.

Henry Hopkins Sibley was born in Natchitoches in 1816. His father, Samuel, died when he was only seven years old, after which lived with an uncle and aunt in Missouri. He was admitted to West Point when he was seventeen, and when he graduated in 1838, he was commissioned as second lieutenant in the 2nd U.S. Dragoons. Between 1840 and 1860 he fought Seminole Indians in Florida, served on the Texas frontier, fought in the Mexican–American War, was involved in trying to control conflict in Bleeding Kansas and quelling a Mormon uprising in Utah. In 1857, Sibley was assigned active service protecting settlers from Navajo and Apache attacks in New Mexico.

During the 1850s, Sibley invented and patented a tent and stove for military purposes. The "Sibley tent", which was inspired by the teepees of Native American Plains Indians, was widely used by both the Union Army and Confederate Armies during the Civil War. The conical Sibley tent stove, pictured on the right side of this tent, was used by the Army into the early years of the second World War. Despite the popularity of both of these inventions, Sibley received little remuneration for them.

Sibley tents in Camp Columbus, NM in 1916 during the build-up to the Punitive Expedition. The lower skirts have been removed from the one in the foreground to keep the air inside cool.

At the time that the Civil War began, Sibley was stations at Fort Union, in northern New Mexico. Like many soldiers who had been raised in the south, he resigned his commission to join the Confederate Army. Sibley resigned on May 13, 1861, the same day he was promoted to major in the 1st Dragoons. Had he not left, he would have been offered the command of the military department of New Mexico, since the man who had held that position, Colonel William Wing Loring, had also left to take a southern commission.

Sibley took a stagecoach out of New Mexico. A diary of a Union soldier stationed in Albuquerque says that, while passing through in a stagecoach, Sibley stuck his head out the window and shouted “Boys, I'm the worst enemy you have!”

He passed through Texas and Louisiana on his way to Richmond, Virginia, where he talked Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederate States, into commissioning him as a brigadier general. Davis authorized him to recruit a brigade of volunteers in central and south Texas. Sibley’s plan was to march to El Paso, then occupy New Mexico. From there, he would seize the rich mines of Colorado Territory, turn west through Salt Lake City, and capture the seaports of Los Angeles and San Diego and the California goldfields.

Sibley's battle cry, “On to California!” inspired 2,000 men to join his campaign. By early fall of 1861, Sibley had three regiments of what he named The Army of New Mexico, plus artillery and supply units, camped on the outskirts of San Antonio. One of them, at least in my story, was Jemmy Martin.

Where Duty Calls is the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War and written for middle grade readers. It is scheduled to be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, on June 14, 2022.

It is available for preorder here.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former New Mexico history teacher. She is a native New Mexican and lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque.

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The First Song of the Civil War

2/20/2022

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Soldiers sang a lot while sitting around their campfires. Illustration from Where Duty Calls by Ian Bristow

People sang a lot more at the time of the Civil War than they do now. There were no i-pods, no portable boom boxes, no radios to entertain soldiers as they traveled from place to place or sat around the campfire. Instead, they sang together. Singing helped boost morale and united the soldiers. Robert E. Lee, the greatest general on the Confederate side, said, "I don't think we could have an army without music."

In my middle grade historical novel Where Duty Calls, both the Confederate soldiers and the Union ones, as well as the Spanish-speaking residents of the town of Socorro, sing songs that are authentic to the period.

One song that was very popular at the time of the Civil War but not included in Where Duty Calls is "The First Gun is Fired: May God Protect the Right." Written by George Frederick Root, it is recognized as the first song specifically written for the American Civil War, and was published and distributed just three days after the Battle of Fort Sumter.

"The First Gun is Fired: May God Protect the Right," isn't the most recognizable of Civil War songs to 21st century listeners, but it is likely that every Union soldier would have known it. Root went on to write many other songs that had a war theme. "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!" was also wildly popular at the time of the war. His most enduring song, "The Battle Cry of Freedom," continues to be well known.

The prolific songwriter was born August 30, 1820 in Sheffield, Massachusetts. He died in 1895, leaving behind a legacy of church hymns and popular parlor songs.

Here are the lyrics to the Civil War's first song:

1. The first gun is fired!
May God protect the right!
Let the freeborn sons of the North arise
In power’s avenging night;
Shall the glorious Union our father’s have made,
By ruthless hands be sunder’d,
And we of freedom sacred rights
By trait’rous foes be plunder’d?

Chorus--Arise! arise! arise!
And gird ye for the fight,
And let our watchword ever be,
“May God protect the right!”

2. The first gun is fired!
Its echoes thrill the land,
And the bounding hearts of the patriot throng,
Now firmly take their stand;
We will bow no more to the tyrant few,
Who scorn our long forbearing,
But with Columbia’s stars and stripes
We’ll quench their trait’rous daring.

3. The first gun is fired!
Oh, heed the signal well,
And the thunder tone as it rolls along
Shall sound oppression’s knell;
For the arm of freedom is mighty still,
But strength shall fail us never,
Its strength shall fail us never,
That strength we’ll give to our righteous cause,
And our glorious land forever.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a former New Mexico history teacher. The native New Mexican lives in the mountains east of Albuquerque.

Her novel Where Duty Calls is the first in a trilogy of novels set in New Mexico during the Civil War and is written for middle grade readers. It is scheduled to be published by Kinkajou Press, a division of Artemesia Publishing, on June 14, 2022 and is now available for preorder here.

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Some love (and not) for Middle Grade Books

2/6/2022

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Middle Grade readers can be pretty confused about life. Kids in the upper end of elementary school and the lower end of middle school or junior high often don't know from day to day whether they want to be treated like adults or kids. When I taught middle school, I listened to kids snort derisively when a sticker appeared on their returned work, then complain when they didn't. The same kid who seemed to be emotionally bobbing in the rafters one day would seem to crawl on his belly the next. A lot of this confusion is hormone driven. Puberty is hard on bodies and minds alike.

These conflicting emotions often come to a head around a holiday, especially one as emotionally charged as Valentine's Day. Kids say they don't care if they get valentine's cards, but there's a bit of fear in their eyes right behind the bravado. They may think valentines are childish, but they're afraid that not getting any will mean they're not liked by anyone.

Hector Anderson, the main character in the series named The Anderson Family Chronicles, is a typical geeky 6th grade boy who doesn't get what all the fuss is surrounding Valentine's Day. Like his preschool-aged brother Stevie, he's most attracted to the candy - which Stevie called the tweet sarts and pollylops - until a new girl enrolls in his school and he is bitten by the love bug. Hec finds himself in competition with the handsome, athletic, and rather bullying big man on campus to win a dance with Sandy at the Valentine's Day dance.

If this sounds like a book you'd like, you're in luck. My Valentine's Day gift to you is a copy of Tweet Sarts! You can get a copy for free just by signing up for my emails here. If you'd rather not, you can still download the book for just .99 on Amazon between February 7 and 14. Please pass this on to anyone who might also want a copy.

I recently read From the Desk of Zoe Washington, by Janae Marks. I know that I'm in the minority here, but I didn't love this book. Google says that 97% of the people who read it loved this book. It got 4.3 out of 5 stars on Goodreads, and 4.8 out of 5 on Audible. What turned me off is what I call the Ariel Affect.

Ariel is the name of the little mermaid in the Disney version of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale. In the original version, the mermaid falls in love with a prince and uses magic to become human, but he spurns her for a mortal princess. The broken-hearted Little Mermaid almost kills the prince in order to become a mermaid again, but instead throws herself overboard and becomes seafoam. In the end, she is transformed into an ethereal, earthbound spirit and given 300 years to make up for her errors by doing good deeds before attaining Heaven.

In the Disney version, the Little Mermaid defies her father and convention to chase the prince, and is rewarded by living happily ever after. She proves that her father was wrong in his assumptions, and that she had every right to determine her own future, despite her father's wishes.

In From the Desk of Zoe Washington, Zoe receives a letter on her 12th birthday from her biological father, who is in prison for murder. She decides to sneak around behind her mother's back to get to know her father. Zoe lies and engages in some pretty dangerous behaviors as she tries to prove that her father is innocent. Occasionally she wonders if he is all that she thinks he is. What if he really is a murder? What if he's not as nice as he appears? In the end, though, she is able to prove that he is innocent and the whole family accepts him into their lives.

This is all well and good in a novel, but it's a bit scary in real life. While it's true that some people are incarcerated for crimes they did not commit, it's also true that a lot of people who are imprisoned are con artists who can sweet talk the innocent and naïve into believing their sad-sack stories. Zoe's story might have turned out very differently.

Parenting has never been easy. It's harder when the media tries to convince children that they know what is good for them far better than their parents do. I know there are bad parents out there, but most are doing their best to protect their children from dangerous and hurtful situations. I hope no child reads From the Desk of Zoe Washington and does what she does, only to end out with a less than fairy tale ending to their own personal story.

After a career teaching English and history at the high school and middle school level, Jennifer Bohnhoff left the classroom and now writes from her home high up in the mountains of central New Mexico. Her next book, Where Duty Calls, is the first in a trilogy of middle grade historical novels about the Civil War in New Mexico, and will be published this summer by Kinkajou Press.

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Great Reads for Horse-Crazy Girls

1/23/2022

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Young girls and horses are a special duo. Like many young girls, I was enamored with horses when I was young. I was lucky enough to have a friend who had one. She let me muck stables and pick hooves to my heart's content. I rode nearly every summer while attending Girl Scout Camp, and when I was old enough, I became a camp counselor. I spent two summers leading trail rides and teaching younger girls all about horses.

Here are two books for girls who are as horse-crazy as I was. It's interesting (and completely coincidental!) that both involve cases of mistaken identity.

Yee ha! Middle Grade Readers will love LuAnn M. Rod's Maddie McDowell and the Rodeo Robbery! (Chicken Scratch Books, June 2021)

After her mother's death, Maddie is sent to a strict school for young ladies. A lady Maddie is not. She's a cowgirl who wants to join the rodeo! Fortunately for her, she's mistaken for a rodeo star, and gets a chance to prove herself. Unfortunately, someone else riding with the rodeo is a thief. Maddie must gather her courage and her wits to solve the mystery, earn her own spot in the rodeo, and reconcile herself with her family.

Set right after the close of World War I, this book has few historical references, but the clothing, the technology and some of the customs firmly set it in its period. This book lopes along at a good pace. It has some fun characters that readers will really want to cheer for, including a pugnacious dog who always shows up and the right time. Maddie learns some valuable life lessons in this sweet and fun read.

Linda Wilson's Tall Boots is for a slightly younger reader. In it, Ashley is a beginning rider who wants to earn a blue ribbon at the 4-H show and convince her mother that she is serious enough about riding to deserve a pair of tall riding boots. When her too-big helmet slips over her face, Ashley is mistaken for someone else and ends up competing in a more experienced class of riders. Luckily for her, Lacy, her spunky Welsh Mountain pony, knows just what to do. This picture book is filled with colorful and sweet illustrations and includes information on how readers can join the 4-H.

Jennifer Bohnhoff was a middle school teacher for years. Now she's staying home to write and walk her enormous dog in the mountains outside her house. Her novel Code: Elephants on the Moon is also the story of a girl and her horse. Set in Normandy just prior to the D-Day Invasion, Eponine Lambaol and Galopin, her stocky Brittany, must avoid tangling with the Nazis that run her village as she helps the French Resistance and tries to come to grips with the secrets in her own past. This, too, is a middle grade book about a spunky girl with a mistaken identity.

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The Dreaded Cliff: Middle Grade Book Review

1/2/2022

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Flora is a plump little packrat who thinks, in her own little packratty way, that she is a goddess. Like all of her species, she collects treasures: shiny things and prickly things and soft things to decorate her nest, which is under the floorboards of what we could call a Volkswagen van, but she calls a jangly-crate. That's one of the joys of this book: the reader sees the story through the eyes of a rodent who does not always know the human words for the things around her.

Another joy is that Flora loves words, but also mangles them. This teeny Mrs. Malaprop is at her finest when she is addressing his muskiness, errr, manliness, errr mushiness, King Cyrus, a kangaroo rat with an outsized sense of self worth.

Flora lives a perfect packrat life. She snuggles in her treasure-packed nest and 'snibbes' snacks from the munch mound with her packrat pal, Gertrude. The only thing that threatens her serenity is the dreaded cliff, a frightening and fabled place that she has been warned to stay away from since she was a wee pup. When old Grandma Mimi tells Flora about that it was their ancestral home until a mysterious killer wiped out a litter of pups and took over, Flora feels called to reclaim the cliff. However, her plans are thwarted by an inadvertent trip in which she loses her home in the jangly-crate but finds some allies and discovers her own pluck. In the end, Flora must find her way home, and find the courage to face her own fears.

Each chapter in this book begins with a charming black and white illustration by Odessa Sawyer. At the back of the book is a short but informative section on the real animals behind the characters in this book. It is a fine and entertaining book for young readers who are interested in the flora and fauna of the American southwest.

Author: Terry Nichols
ISBN: 9781951122126 (paperback)
ISBN: 9781951122171 (ebook)
Publication Date: March 2, 2021
Price: $12.95
Pages: 250

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Throwing out the Baby with the Potato Water

1/23/2020

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My critique partners can attest that sometimes I don't remember my own books. They've been through so many revisions that I can't remember what's in them and what's been expunged.
I forget sub-plots. I can't remember characters' names. Often I've forgotten whole scenes.

This became a bit of a problem for me this past week. I'd had the honor of being asked to guest-write a post on Project Mayhem, a fabulous blog on writing hosted by a wonderful group of Middle Grade authors. I decided to address how little historical details can help readers grasp what a period of time was like, and how even the littlest of details could lead to some big questions. As an example, I decided to use a quirky little historical detail from my Civil War novel, The Bent Reed, which will be published in both paperback and ebook in September.

The quirky little historical detail in question is from a laundry scene; After washing Pa and Lijah's shirts, Ma dips them into a vat that contains the water left over from boiling potatoes. Why would she do this, you ask? Because the left-over potato water would have had starch suspended in it, and the starch would have made ironing the shirts easier, and the ironed shirts more crisp.

I remember learning this little historical detail in a Civil War era book of hints for housewives and being fascinated. I delight in little bits of trivia like this. I thought that it could lead to many interesting discussions about resource use and thriftiness.

As I wrote my post last week, I decided that this detail was a perfect example of how little bits of trivial information about everyday life in an historical period could not only bring that period to life for readers, but help readers ask big questions about how history informs the present day. And so I pulled out my manuscript and began searching for the scene.

And this is where I ran into a problem, because the scene wasn't there. I searched using potato and starch and laundry as key words. I found several scenes with laundry, but none involved a vat of potato water or even an iron.
Apparently, at some point in my rewriting and revision process I had cut this beloved little bit of trivia from my story and then forgotten about doing so.

Thinking about it now, I'm not surprised that I'd thrown out the vat of potato water. Even the most interesting bits of historical trivia have to either move the plot along or illuminate the characters. Although I cannot remember thinking so, I must have decided at some point that the potato water did neither.

Now that I think of it, I'm convinced that using the water left over from boiling potatoes show just how frugal Ma was. Like most women in her era, she used a good deal of her own elbow grease and determination to make sure to turn everything to good account.

Maybe I threw out the baby with the potato water.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is an educator and writer who lives in New Mexico. She has written two novels set in the Civil War: The Bent Reed, which takes place at Gettysburg, and Valverde, set in New Mexico. The sequel to Valverde, Glorieta, will be published this spring. This post was originally published July 14, 2014.

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Play ball, girls!

3/25/2016

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Not all girls want to play the sports usually reserved for them. Unfortunately, girls face a lot of resistance breaking into sports that are traditionally in the males' domain. While this resistance might not be fun for girls who face it, it makes for great middle grade reading.

Spring is here, and the metallic ping of aluminum bats hitting baseballs rings through the land. Most of those bats are swung by boys, but there are some girls who'd rather hit a hard ball than a softball.

The Sweet Spot, Stacy Barnett Mozer, is a great book for athletic middle school and upper elementary girls. Thirteen-year-old Sam Barrette’s baseball coach tells her that her attitude's holding her back, but how can she not have an attitude when she has to listen to boys and people in the stands screaming things like “Go play softball,” all season, just because she's the only girl playing in the 13U league. Lovely and sensitive, this book will help guide girls through the difficulties of asserting themselves and becoming leaders in a man's world.

The Sweet Spot comes out in a new edition published by Spellbound River today. I'll be interviewing the author on this blog next week. If this book appeals to you, enter a giveaway at Rafflecopter.

The Girl Who Threw Butterflies, by Mick Cochrane, is another book about a girl trying to play baseball. After her father's death in a car accident, eighth grader, Molly Williams decides to join the baseball team and show off the knuckleball her father taught her how to throw. Although the author does a little more telling than showing, this book also gives a fair picture of a girl overcoming hardships, both on the field and in her personal life.

And, just because not every girl wants to play baseball, I'm including Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. This novel tells the story of fifteen-year-old D. J. Schwenk, the only daughter of a farmer in Red Bend, Wisconsin who loves football so much that he names his cows after football players. D.J. knows a lot about football because of her brothers, but when she decides that she wants to join the team, the opposition nearly sacks her courage

Let us hope that the opposition to girls in male dominated sports truly becomes an historical issue soon.

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Sandy's Cookies

1/4/2016

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They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

Although Hec fell for Sandy at first sight, there's no denying that her cookies played a part in winning his eternal devotion.

Here's the recipe for the cookie that won Hec's heart:

Sandy's Cookies
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 shortening
2 tsp. vanilla
1 egg
1 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup candy coated chocolate pieces (such as M&Ms)
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 375.
Beat brown sugar, butter and shortening until light and fluffy.
Add vanilla and egg. Beat well.
Stir in flour, baking soda and salt.
Stir in candies and nuts.
Drop by teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake for 8-10 minutes until light golden brown (unless you're Sandy, and then you can burn them a bit.). Cool 1 minute before removing from cookie sheet onto rack to cool completely.

Hec and Sandy are characters in Jennifer Bohnhoff's newest middle grade novel, Tweet Sarts: An Anderson Family Chronicle, which is now available to preorder as an ebook and will be available in ebook and paperback starting on January 15th.

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The "What ifs" of History

1/27/2015

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New York : Published by E. Anthony, 501 Broadway, [ca. 1846]

New York : E. Anthony [ca. 1846]

In February 1861 the lieutenant colonel in command of the 2nd U.S. Calvary Regiment stationed at Fort Mason, Texas received orders to report to General-in-Chief Winfield Scott in Washington D.C. for reassignment.

When the officer's stagecoach stopped over in San Antonio, he was accosted by three secessionist army commis-sioners. Texas sided with the south, but as there had been no formal declaration of war, the policy was to allow federal soldiers to march out of the state unimpeded.

The commissioners announced that the U.S. garrison at San Antonio had already left, and that the city was under Confederate control. The lieutenant colonel must declare himself in favor of the Confederacy, or the commissioners would detain him as a prisoner of war.

The officer drew himself to attention and proudly stated that he was not a Texan, but a Virginian, and that he would decide for himself which side to take. His brave comportment must have cowed the commissioners, because they chose not to press the issue. He continued his journey eastward.

When he arrived in Washington D.C., General Scott offered the man the top field-command position in the Union Army. The lieutenant colonel declined, choosing allegiance to his state over his country.

Had those commissioners in San Antonio imprisoned that lieutenant colonel, the Civil War would have been a very different. That lieutenant colonel was Robert E. Lee, and his decision to align himself with the south profoundly affected the course of American history.

What if Robert E. Lee had moldered in a Confederate POW Camp for the entire period of the Civil War?

Such 'what ifs' are the fodder of alternative histories, those works of fiction in which events play out differently than actually happened. In these novels, the South wins the war, or slaves revolt on their own and now fight both North and South, or Europe intercedes for one side or the other. The stream of history jumps its course and nothing is as we know it.

But not all 'what ifs' are in the realm of alternative history.

What if you woke one day to find an enemy army camped on your property?

What if your house became a field hospital for one side, then the other?

What if your crops were trampled, your animals slaughtered and your fields littered with bloated corpses?

These were some of the questions I asked myself when I was writing The Bent Reed, my historical novel set in Gettysburg.

I found the answers in journals, memoirs and newspaper articles from the period, and in secondary sources that quoted the personal remembrances of people who had lived through the battle. I then created a fictitious family plunked their farm down right where armies would collide. I made them suffer through many circumstances that had happened to real people. The stream of history stayed in its channel and ran its course, even if it flowed over rocks that I had imagined into place.

Historical novels help readers put themselves into the swirling events of history. By reading them, we begin to ask our own 'what ifs.'

What if I were present at the Battle of Gettysburg? How would I have reacted to the violence or its aftermath? What lessons can I learn from those who have gone before me?

The answers not only help us understand the past, but help us to proceed into the future.

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Forward>>

Of Palaces and Drummer boys

A General with a Plan

The First Song of the Civil War

Some love (and not) for Middle Grade Books

Great Reads for Horse-Crazy Girls

The Dreaded Cliff: Middle Grade Book Review

Throwing out the Baby with the Potato Water

Play ball, girls!

Sandy's Cookies

The "What ifs" of History

ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

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