Research! Because someone must...go to France!

From collection at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, TX

I am planning a new book. And the research delights me.
I've done all the "book learning" about it and sat in far too many dusty libraries. At Walter Reed Army Medical Center. At the National Archives in Washington. At Carlysle Barracks in Carlysle, PA. I've also   gone to The Imperial War Museum in London and gathered invaluable experience.
In all these wonderful places, I've read letters and reports. I've looked at old old photos. Catalogued them.
Learned about medical practices during wartime.
And now I am prepping for my last bit of research.
A FIELD TRIP!
To France!
So excited I cannot stand myself.
But yes, I am going to France for 3 weeks to take pictures, visit battlefields and learn the terrain. Literally.
I have lists, cross referenced with facts, ready to be woven into an accurately portrayed novel.
In the 1980s, I wrote this book and allllllllmost published it. Made a lot of people happy, astonished and interested.  So much so that these people remember this book VIVIDLY.
Now, after more than sixty published novels and novellas, I am a much better writer and this time, when I finish this book, I know there will be an audience for it.
"War Horse" tells me so. "Downton Abbey" does, too. I am certain there will be more pointing to the fact that the public will now see the first World War as a subject that bears honest scrutiny and that it should be studied for what it tells us about ourselves, good and bad.
And what of my novel?
The time period? 1917-1918.
The place? America and in France with the AEF, American Expeditionary Forces.
The subject my friends cannot forget? A woman's view of World War I.

History and the movies?

As a professionally trained historian (with grad degree in the Old Stuff), I love to write historical fiction and read it.

Recently, a professor of American history gave a big slam on prime time TV to the new movie, THE HELP. Her critique was, IMHO, the one of the "More Knowledgeable Academician" telling the lowly world how inaccurate, improper and downright disgraceful the film was to have portrayed that time and place and characters with joy, humor or compassion. Her conclusion was that the film is a gross glossing over of the truth.

Now, first, I must tell you, I read this book months ago. Loved it for its humor, compassion and finely drawn characters. Most of all, I loved it for its portrayal of the times and the milieu. I lived through that time and I remember it well.  And while I lived in a fully integrated city and went to public school in one, I also went to college with women (and men) from the Deep South. I know what my friends thought and how they lived. I listened to them as we watched riots and hosings, the aftermath of the murder of Medgar Evers and Dr. King. I visited the South with my friends, met their parents and siblings. And while I am not a professional historian of slavery in America, I can say all of the following with certitude:

1. No book, non-fiction or fiction, can portray the total truth of a period or a people.

2. One book, non-fiction or fiction, can explore only one angle, hopefully, well.

3. One author, especially a fiction author, does not aspire to write the definitive picture of a person, place or period.  (If she does, she'll never finish that book.)

4. The author's job is to pick one premise, one theme and one or two morals of the story. If she's doing her job well, she's going to use the best of her talents to accomplish that limited goal.

5. This author chose to portray a group of white women and a group of black women whose intertwining relationships were representative of a culture and a period.

I think she accomplished her goal well.

If she didn't accomplish this TV historian's goal well, she didn't have to. 

And clearly, since THE HELP continues to strike a chord in hundreds of thousands of people who have read and continue to read it--and smile and laugh and shake their heads and feel the pain of those characters--the author did her job.

That is the only thing she was supposed to do.

The only job any author of fiction has or should.