Blending fact and fiction

I like history. I like studying it, writing about it, and visiting it -- or at least visiting the places where it was made. For that reason, I have set all of my novels in the past and wrapped several around notable historical events, ranging from hurricanes, floods, and wildfires to wars, fairs, and volcanic eruptions. Even speeches and shipwrecks get their due.

Some of the events, like the 1900 Galveston hurricane, described in September Sky, are big. Others, like the 1964 Beatles concert in Seattle, described in The Mirror, are small. Still others, like the 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds, featured in Mercer Street, are both. All form essential backdrops to works of historical fiction.

In Sea Spray, the third book in the five-book Time Box series, readers will get history both big and small. They will get a big dose of Charles Lindbergh and smaller doses of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and George Gershwin. They will see the Roaring Twenties unfold in real time.

In the novel, set on Long Island, New York, in 1927, the Lanes, a time-traveling family from 2021, see Lindbergh as a person and an icon. They meet the unassuming airmail pilot before he flies across the ocean and later celebrate his triumph in a ticker-tape parade. They participate in history as millions of Americans did nearly a century ago.

Blending fact and fiction is fun. It's also problematic. Doing it right requires homework and guesswork. In Mercer Street, I had to research Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt before introducing them to my time travelers. In River Rising, I had to read up on Mark Twain. I wanted conversations and interactions that never happened to ring true.

In developing my Lindbergh, I researched the real-life pilot and acquainted myself with the screen version. The Spirit of St. Louis, a 1957 movie starring Jimmy Stewart, inspired two chapters and several story ideas in Sea Spray. I added passages about Lindy's cat after reading about the feline's footnote role in the historic event.

Sea Spray, my eighteenth novel, is now in its fourth revision and in the hands of the editor. It is still set for a January 2021 release.