Shelley Mickle's Blog

I have been writing narrative nonfiction, switching from writing novels, and for those of you who write too, I have tips to pass on. I'd love to hear from you and walk you though the decisions I made in writing Borrowing Life. My agent had its first draft turned down by 4 N.Y. publishers before I learned to write narrative nonfiction with the emotional drive of a novel.

BORROWING LIFE is about one of the most important contributions to humankind in the 20th century. Two men who spent their lives achieving the first successful organ transplant received Nobel Prizes. The research was daunting and until I convinced myself that I could distill the essence of the important concepts to the understanding of the lay public, I floundered in the sea of overwhelming facts.

This is the sort of story that changes readers' lives. For I firmly believe that being in the presence of great minds and good people, we become better people by their example. They become a sort of comfort in our everyday lives. When I come to a point of having to make a difficult decision, I now reflect on the people I wrote about, asking: What would Joe do? What would Jean do? What would Peter do. How would Franny handle this?

Shelleyfm@aol.com

Since my novel THE OCCUPATION OF ELIZA GOODE was a Huffington Post PICK OF THE WEEK on Nov.4, I've had the great pleasure of visiting a book club almost every week to discuss the novel and the research I did. How glorious to meet so many enthusiastic readers of all books, and how gratifying to learn that readers do indeed seem to LOVE Eliza, just as I intended. The history of the Civil War from a woman's viewpoint is generating lots of energetic discussions! Who knew that officers' wives often accompanied their husbands to war! The camp-followers' stories come to life as Eliza guides us through her own story of transcendence from prostitute to laundress to nurse to officer's wife and community activist. Below is the first chapter and a little about me as the author. Happy reading!

AUTHOR BIO
Shelley Fraser Mickle is an award- winning novelist and NPR commentator whose family history (everyone in her family was named after Robert E. Lee) led her to the life-long belief that one day she would write a Civil War novel. Shelley’s debut novel was a New York Times Notable Book; her second became a CBS/Hallmark Channel movie; and her third became a suicide prevention tool in high schools, winning the 2006 Florida Governor’s Award for suicide prevention in an educational setting. She was invited to be a commentator for NPR’s “Morning Edition” in 2000. Her radio essays can be heard at NPR.org. She is also the author of the children’s classic, Barbaro, America’s Horse. Due to her commitment to literacy and the power of story, she is a nominee to the Florida Women's Hall of Fame.


THE OCCUPATION OF ELIZA GOODE
Chapter One

She was one month from seventeen. It must have been about two o’clock, March 9, l861 on South Basin Street in New Orleans when she was called into the room where her mother and Preston Cummings sat, to be told: told of the promise—for a price, that is—made at her age of four to be his upon her seventeenth birthday. So it was that Eliza walked into the game room of the Parlor House where every night Madam Francine allowed men to wait, where they played cards until they were invited upstairs by one of the “boarders,” whom Madame Francine affectionately called her “veshyas” and where, if the men did not have one girl in mind, she would choose one for them, bringing first one to the table, then another, as though merely saying hello.

“Yes, here, Eliza. Come here.” Her mother’s voice rises, no doubt, bursting with what she thought was her spectacular advance planning: “I have a surprise.”

Wearing a lavender day dress with white piping at the collar, its hem sweeping across the thick mauve rug, Eliza stops where they sit: her mother and Preston Cummings together on a small settee. The windows, heavily draped in purple velvet, let in only a slit of light, so the chandelier’s prisms of glass scatter rays of shell-pink across the ceiling like butterflies in flight. And the ceiling, Eliza notes, is already strangely leaking a smoky naranja rojizo of emotion that she cannot yet read.

Tall vases of jasmine lace the air with a honey-sweetness, which is the calling-card of the purple arts, eventually giving rise to a legend that nineteenth century New Orleans prostitutes often wore snips of jasmine as perfume, prompting an opening of, “Want a little jas’?” And since all brothels employed piano players to play what, jocularly, they called, “Ass music,” the idioms were bound to slide and merge to take shape on the tongue as jazz.

“Yes, here, Eliza.” Her mother reaches for her hand as Preston Cummings leans over a hat of beaver felt in his lap and takes her other hand, cupping it in his own wide palm. He is now forty-eight years old. There seems never to have been a time when Eliza did not know him. But today his face wears an odd, disturbing expression, nothing like she is used to seeing him taking her for rides in his carriage, taking her to the park, buying her sweets on Esplanade Avenue, year after year.

Today his eyes burn with some strange emotion; but then, over the last five days he has often been highly emotional, ever since Lincoln was inaugurated as President—though most often the emotion has been rage.

He wears an expensive suit of black broadcloth with cuffless trousers over his boots. A satin waistcoat sets off the stiff white of his shirt, and as he pulls her closer, rubbing his thumb across her hand, Eliza catches the scent of sweet, cherry smoking tobacco: his favorite, the one he always uses in his pipe

“Eliza, my dear. Come closer. Yes, right here.” His voice too is different—thick and liquid. But, as usual, there is his swarthy handsomeness: hair and mustache whiskey-black, sharp ancestral French features, long nose, high cheek bones, eyes glittery dark. His right ear folds over at the rim, a defect since birth; and his manicured fingers wrap around a walking stick where, in the handle, is hidden his Arkansas toothpick, the renowned dagger of the time. “Yes, Sweet Eliza, your mother and I have a surprise.”

Oh, how thin her mother looks in an afternoon gown of violeta rouge highlighting her hair. As she squeezes Eliza’s hand, Eliza notes that her mother’s hand feels fish-skin damp and her voice changes to the tone of speaking to a very small child: “Remember, how I always told you of a life where you would never want for a thing? How you would be the center of a great man’s life? That you would one day have a wonderful new future? Well, this is your future—Mister Preston, as you have known him, is now Mister Preston Cummings to be someone else quite different again. You see, Darling, I promised years ago that on your seventeenth birthday you would be his. To be his only. And with such patience all these years, he has waited! What a prize he has won! What do you think of our surprise?”

Dear One, what a stupid dummy-girl! Why had I not even guessed this? How had I misread all the signs? Was it only a child’s wish to have a father, to be out in the world closed to me? O! I was such a stupid puppet! Why not wail and cry and kick on the floor, screaming no, no, no; I would not have it? Ah! But you see, in that moment I understood what I always knew but now grasped in a way I could not ever have been told. I was a whore’s child. This was our world—my mother’s and mine. This was my intended occupation. Who was I to flail against it? It had fed us. To be one man’s only was a prize—to be a courtesan! O! Poor stupid mother! This was what she chose as best for me.

Quietly, I turned and went out of the room, my feet and hands marble. My very breath narrowed to a wheeze. My world had stopped, and I slid off. Until I could find another to climb onto, I would keep my life in its ice bucket.

That night, I grew two hearts. There was the one, open as ever to whoever walked by. The other, darkly labeled, No Entry. This was where I carved out a sacred spot—where no one had a right to look into. I myself guarded it furiously. My Holy of Holies. At least this part of me could never be sold.

Lincoln’s 53rd Birthday
By Shelley Fraser Mickle
Shelley has been a NPR commentator and is the author of a new Civil War novel, THE OCCUPATION OF ELIZA GOODE, pick of the week by Publisher’s Weekly and The Huffington Post 11/4


In the seven years that I researched and wrote my recent novel, THE OCCUPATION OF ELIZA GOODE, I naturally became acquainted with much about Lincoln’s life. I knew certain facts, but I did not know how those facts translated into the feel of living. As his birthday approaches this coming week, February 12, 2014, I am every day thinking of the grave challenges this amazing man faced. His life informs us all.

President Lincoln’s 53rd birthday must have been the most difficult in his life. February, 1862 was a dark time. The nation had been at war with itself for ten months. There had not yet been a significant victory for the Union. In fact, the one big battle that previous summer at Bull Run Creek had been an embarrassing disaster. It became known as the Great Skedaddle when many of the Union troops rushed from the battlefield, elbowing their way through the traffic jam of spectators--those who had driven out from Washington to see the first big clash between the northern and southern armies.

Early in February, the President’s eleven-year-old son, Willie was stricken with typhoid fever; and on the morning of the President’s birthday was lying upstairs in the White House fighting for his life.
His labored breathing could be heard even in the hall. Some time that morning, Willie rallied a bit, and the President’s mood brightened. Then another bit of good news arrived in a telegram from his new general, Ulysses S. Grant.

Grant was poised outside Fort Donelson, preparing for battle and the occupation of Clarksville, Tennessee. He thought a Union victory would be the perfect birthday gift for the president and said, “I hope to send you a dispatch from Fort Donelson tomorrow.”

Days before, Grant had taken Fort Henry in Kentucky. In swashbuckling style he had ridden his horse down a steep incline, sliding all the way, and then jumped onto his steamboat to head to Fort Donelson 12 miles away.

The 40 –year- old general was hungry for success. More than anything, he feared poverty. Since his graduation from West Point, he had failed at every business venture he had tried. At the outbreak of the Civil War, when he was offered a commission in the army, his father sent word, “Be careful ’Ulyss’ you’re a general now; it’s a good job, don’t lose it.”

On the afternoon of February 12, Grant launched his attack. It was a bloody quick victory so that two days later white flags of surrender whipped in the cold wind. 5,000 men were dead or lying wounded; 14,000 of the Confederate army had been taken prisoner to be shipped north to prisons. When the Confederate general, who had been Grant’s close friend at West Point, asked for terms of surrender, Grant answered, “Unconditional.”

This first significant Union victory gained control of the ironworks in Clarkesville that produced the cannon affectionately nicknamed THE NAPOLEON. It was also the first major stab-wound to the Confederacy which President Lincoln desperately needed.

Quickly, the press introduced Ulysses S. Grant to the nation as he took on the nickname Unconditional Surrender Grant. And a swelling number of fans sent boxes of cigars to his headquarters.

On February 20, at about 5 p.m., Willie died. His death would be a sorrow from which President Lincoln would never recover. For three more agonizing years the brutal war would go on

For a man so deep in sorrow, for a nation so splintered, it’s no wonder that so many of the details faded and mostly the date of his birthday remains. But February 12, 1862 was a crucial day in our nation’s history.

So yes, it’s good each year to take a day to remember the man who believed that the preservation of our unity was worth any amount of pain.

Today in 2014, not many of us are aware that the Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, l863, was a touch-and-go executive order that President Lincoln agonized over. Not that he questioned the content or the moral issue, for he knew that erasing the stain of slavery was essential for the wellbeing of the young nation--but WHEN to release the order was the question. Lincoln wrote it, wanted to release it early in the war, but his cabinet convinced him that he needed to release the proclamation after a military victory so that the fact that the country would survive as one nation would be made clear--especially to Britain and France, who were both considering recognizing the Confederacy as a separate nation. Lincoln locked the Emancipation Proclamation away, then brought it out when he could "claim" a victory at Antietam. The fact of the order's existence, and that Lincoln would eventually release it, was announced in the newspapers. However, it wasn't until January 1, l863 after the battle of Stones River-- a vicious bloody Union victory that made it completely clear that the Union was not faltering--that President Lincoln released his executive order freeing all slaves in the territory under rebellion. These are some of the facts that I came to understand in greater depth in writing THE OCCUPATION OF ELIZA GOODE. I wanted to pass on what I was learning to my readers--hence the seven years of research and writing to finish the novel. In this new year, 150 years after the Civil War, I think it is important to appreciate that we were saved as a nation by a brutal war and the vision of President Lincoln. He knew that If we survived as one nation, our young country would become a world power. In 2014, unity is still the source of our greatest strength. Happy New Year!

A funny little story about General Custer taught me that officers’ wives in the l800s often followed their husbands to war. Since General Custer and his wife never had children, it was said that they remained somewhat like teenagers in the midst of a high-school romance, fraught with jealousy and high drama. Since his wife never wanted to let him out of her sight, she followed his army wherever it went, staying in a tent on the camp grounds, then packing up and moving when the army moved. One day, when General Custer’s regiment was about to march, she was getting dressed, and he came frantically galloping to her tent, leaned down and whispered in embarrassment, “Sweetheart, please hurry, you’re holding up the whole army.”
How real this made these people seem! How endearing, timeless and funny! How quickly too I realized that there must be many women’s stories of that time that were simply never heard. As a novelist, I felt called to give at least one of these a voice.
When I began collecting research materials to write a novel set in the Civil War, my favorite book quickly became REMINISCENCES OF A SOLDIER’S WIFE by Mrs. John Logan. You have to read nearly half of the book before you find that Mrs. Logan’s first name was Mary. She, like many, simply disappeared into her husband’s life. And yet, in this primary source, I discovered that when Mary Logan was sixteen she had personally witnessed Lincoln debating Stephen Douglas. The scene she wrote was so mesmerizing that I “lifted” it for my novel, giving credit to Mary Logan. And thus my novel grew over a period of seven years, taking on a hybrid feel between fiction and nonfiction. But how I got to the beginning is in itself a funny story.
You see, it was inevitable that I would write a novel set in the Civil War, since my childhood was simply soaked in the history of that war. Everyone in my immediate family was even named after Robert E. Lee! My grandfather, the only family doctor in our little Arkansas cotton town was Robert Lee Fraser. My father was named R. Lee at a time when it was fashionable to give children only initials as a first name, and yet everyone knew what R. stood for. Then when my brother came along, he was named Rhitt Lee; and then I, Shelley Lee, as if carrying part of the famous general’s name would be an instant job recommendation—at least in the South.
The story of my family’s love affair with the general’s name was so amusing that when my mother was chosen to be on a radio show during a visit to New York in l949, the producers invited her back at the dawn of television to appear on one of the first quiz shows, “Two for the Money” sponsored by Old Gold Cigarettes. (How many remember those days?) There in the Big Apple in l954, my parents bantered with the show’s M.C. about their love affair with Robert E. Lee’s name. The M.C.’s punch line was, “I don’t suppose anyone in your family is named Grant?”
In 2004, searching for a Civil War story to bring to life in a novel, I looked on a website where family members of those who fought in the Civil War post anecdotes. I found there exactly what I was looking for. It began as a few sentences about a Confederate officer, taken prisoner at the surrender of Fort Donelson, who sent a note to General Ulysses Grant asking permission to ride into Clarksville to find someone to care for his seriously ill wife. If granted this permission, he promised to then report back to General Grant as his prisoner.
Such gallantry is so typical of the brutal Civil War, and today seems unbelievable. Indeed, the idea that Grant allowed this request was intriguing, for what if this Confederate officer hired one of the women who followed the army--a camp-follower prostitute, to care for his wife, who then, after the wife’s death could impersonate her?
To study a young woman emerging from an underworld, dealing with shame, employing all her talents toward survival—and learning that more can exist between a man and woman than physical desire—wouldn’t this be a fresh approach to a Civil War novel, one that would illuminate much of the women’s side of the war that has yet been untold? The fact that I grew up near Clarksville, Tennessee, which was occupied by the Union Army for the entire war, gave me confidence in setting the pivotal scenes of the novel there. Furthermore, since the occupation of Clarksville would be the time when my character Eliza would emerge from her past, there would be an intriguing echo for the book’s title.
These thoughts were the seed for THE OCCUPATION OF ELIZA GOODE.
If I carefully and deeply researched such a novel, I felt that my chosen audience of book clubs would be pleased. For I know that book club readers are intelligent, well-educated and eager to experience something new and lasting by the choices of books they read. I learned this not just by being a book club member, but most particularly when I was a newspaper columnist for four years leading my reading public through novels in a newspaper-based book club, “Novel Conversations.”
The photograph that I always considered to be “my Eliza,” I first saw on the cover of Storyville, by Al Rose, taken sometime during the years of l898 to l917 by Ernest Bellocq when prostitution was legalized in New Orleans. Ernest Bellocq is the photographer fictionalized as a character in the movie “Pretty Baby,” which introduced Brook Shields as an actress. Living with that image for so many years while creating Eliza, I was thrilled and relieved to discover that the photograph is in public domain, and therefore available to be on the cover of this novel.
On my way to writing the end of THE OCCUPATION OF ELIZA GOODE, an unexpected, wonderful thing happened: I became less of a regional citizen and completely aware of being an American. Frankly, I don’t think that is a slight reason for any of us—especially in this Civil War sesquicentennial—to pause for a moment in our crazy, techno-driven lives to revisit, and relive through the power of story, the war that saved us. I’m hoping too that this novel, which represents one woman’s voice retrieved from the silence, finds as much meaning in its readers’ lives as it has in mine.
Shelley Lee Fraser Mickle