What’s the story behind the titles?

The Broomcorn Field series currently includes two novels: The Broomcorn Field and Leaving Pontotoc County. And, there is a third novel in progress, Can We Find Our Way Back Home?

As for “broomcorn,” it is a type of sorghum with stems so stiff that it is ideal for making brooms. During the Great Depression and World War II, Oklahoma led the nation in broomcorn production. However, Italy has been growing broomcorn commercially since the sixteenth century. Without divulging intricacies of the novel’s plot, signficant events take place in broomcorn fields near the beginning and the end of the novel.

“Pontotoc” was a word coined by the Chickasaw Nation that means “land of hanging grapes” and that became for them a symbol of plenitude. There is a Pontotoc County in Mississippi, where the Chickasaw Nation originally resided, and there is also a Pontotoc County in Oklahoma—the land to which Chickasaw Nation was forced to relocate in order to make room for White settlers in Mississippi. As with the Chickasaws, the dual heroines of Leaving Pontotoc County face hardships that compel them to undertake moves so foundational that the trajectory of their lives is permanently altered.

Can We Find Our Way Back Home? will focus on the difficulties faced by the World War II generation in adjusting to life in a post-War America.

Why write the books?

Basically, we seem to have lost our heroes in the century following America’s entry into World War I. Hemmed in on one side by Modernism’s conviction that there is fundamental emptiness in bourgeois culture, and on the other side by Post-Modernism’s embrace of cultural relativism, most of our literary heroes have been relegated to be nothing but downright deviant cowards who, even at their best, prove themselves shallow and hypocritical.  One need only consider how Harper Lee recently cut Atticus Finch down a notch in Go Set A Watchman. While most current literary scholars have embraced this development, it doesn’t really resonate with me. I like Franz Kafka’s explanation best: “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” Writing The Broomcorn Field and Leaving Pontotoc County certainly opened up my own frozen sea—and I hope it does so for my readers as well.

I am convinced there was a brief moment in time when the very legacy of the Enlightenment was at stake—and that frightening prospect provides the fuel for both Leaving Pontotoc County and The Broomcorn Field. In place of an encounter with a villain suffering from a serious psychopathology with its roots in the ugly face of industrial or post-industrial America, my novels center on a confrontation with entire nations suffering from serious derangement.

Threatened by the dystopian future of intolerance, racism, and autocracy unleashed by Nazi German, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, everyday Americans who had never even heard of Voltaire or Kant joined the fight and won. These perfectly ordinary people were forced to endure extraordinary challenges, and in the course of doing so, they found a way, not merely to survive, but to maintain their humanity. And by doing so, they saved what is best and most laudable in Western Civilization.

Then, why not simply write historical non-fiction?

With all due respect to the authors of non-fiction histories (which include my now-departed father, who wrote many of them), it is nearly impossible to capture the depth of the joys and the pathos of historical characters. Rather, at least in my experience, the best way to do that is through a novel. In addition, to provide additional context for the narrative, I have inserted historical summaries (the Parados and the Stasimons) preceding each episode, as well as an Exode at the end of each novel.

What is a roman-fleuve novel, and why does The Broomcorn Field series qualify as such?

The French term roman-fleuve literally means “river novel.” It presents a unique narrative structure for fictional works in which primary characters appear in more than one novel. Those who have read both novels will recall instances in which primary characters in The Broomcorn Field make appearances in Leaving Pontotoc County, and vice versa. I fully expect that Can We Find Our Way Back Home? will likewise follow the characters of The Broomcorn Field and Leaving Pontotoc County into post-World War II America.

What role does religion play in both The Broomcorn Field and Leaving Pontotoc County?

The best explanation I can give for the central role of faith in both novels is that historical fiction is best, not when it projects the mindset of current culture backwards, but rather when it endows characters with the hopes and dreams, as well as the biases and prejudices, that were prevalent at the time they lived.

One of the chief differences between the World War II generation and current American society is faith. That does not mean that America in 1941 was “religious.” In fact, church attendance during the late Depression and the War largely resembled church attendance today. While the explanation for this is very complex, the basic reason for diminished church attendance can be traced back to the 1920s, when American churches embraced unbridled capitalism and associated themselves only with economic winners. When the Depression hit, the churches (as they always do) reacted slowly to America’s changing fortunes—and so they did very little to welcome back the growing ranks of economic losers. Moreover, many of those economic losers were virtual nomads who had little time for church attendance, for their single-minded focus was on finding work just to stay alive.

But the larger point is that church attendance and religiosity should never be confused for faith. Especially was this the case after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Americans were desperate. They genuinely feared the country would lose the War and they would become captives of the Axis tyrants.  The nation’s young men would soon enter into combat and face death. The nation’s young women would soon be without those young men and would be forced to take charge in a misogynistic culture that categorically denied that mere women were even capable of taking charge. That generation’s sense of desperation fueled a need to rely on a higher power—which they knew their ancestors had propitiated through prayer, Bible study, and rendering oneself accountable to God.

Simply put, faith was central to the experience of Americans in 1941, and it remained so throughout the War. As such, it is not possible to give a realistic portrayal of American life during the War years without including the faith of the characters.

Why are so many tears shed throughout the series?

As I noted in the Acknowledgements to Leaving Pontotoc County, it was practically impossible to convince our ancestors who survived World War II to talk about it. Looking back from our vantage point eighty years later, it is difficult to imagine how deeply painful their life was every single day. They had every reason to believe the United States would lose the War. But even if America won, there was a very real possibility that the boys who went off to fight it would never return. The brutal combat of World War II most definitely traumatized the men. But women had their own trauma—for in order to win the war, they had to make huge sacrifices. Everything of value was rationed, and they were forced into roles for which they were unprepared. Their experiences were qualitatively different from anything we in America feel today—for essentially they were an entire generation with PTSD—and everyone cried all the time.