Monday, January 8, 2007

Falling in Love with History


Hi, all! While this is not my first contribution to the PASTimes blog, this is my first post as a regular contributing member. So, I thought perhaps I should explain why I’m here.

In my early teens, I began a life-long love affair with history. It was not because of a wonderful teacher who made it come alive in the classroom (she came later, in high school). Nor did it stem from living in the Old West near historic Old Mesilla, New Mexico, where the “ghosts” of Billy the Kid or Kit Carson seemed to stroll the streets.

No. My love—passion—for history was born when I read a book entitled Kathleen that I ordered from the Scholastic book order form at school, because the name was so close to my own. When I received it a few weeks later, I devoured it. Now, I had always been a reader, but before this, my bookshelves were filled with Walter Farley’s Black Stallion books, stories about horses or dogs, and Nancy Drew. When I read Kathleen, though, I was transported to another time and place as I never had been before. You see, Kathleen was a YA historical romance, the story of an Irish girl escaping the potato famine and starting a new life as a servant in Boston (where she falls in love with the wealthy family’s son, naturally).

I was so exhilarated by this book, I immediately re-read it. I then discovered a list of other Sunfire Romances in the front and promptly set about finding them. Each was set in a different era, many involving the characters in major historic events such as the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, the fall of Richmond in 1865, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Battle of the Alamo, the Alaska purchase, and the completion of the first transcontinental railroad. As I read these novels, I started paying more attention in my history classes when I realized the teachers were talking about the events these characters I loved so much were involved in—so much so that when I went to college, I majored in Education, thinking I would become a high school Social Studies teacher.

But I quickly discovered I was not in love with ALL history—just certain parts of it. (And civics and political history? Please, spare me!) I also learned that I liked reading novels and writing stories more than anything else. So I switched my major to English/creative writing, but kept history as my minor—that way I could still take a bunch of history classes, but I would get to take only the ones that interested me. At that time, Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary had just come out, and my parents lived in Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Manassas (Bull Run) battlefields. And, LSU was the school where the top Civil War scholars and experts were part of the History faculty. When I left LSU, I lived in NoVA for about four years and got to visit so many of these sites: Manassas (Bull Run), VA; Sharpsburg (Antietam), MD; Gettysburg, PA (several times, and once took a horseback tour of the battlefield); Harper’s Ferry, WV; Winchester, VA; Chantilly, VA (where I lived); Fair Oaks, VA; and, of course, Washington, DC, itself. History came to life for me as, along with my dad—an expert in military history—I surveyed the actual places where history happened.

Now, many years later, while I still love visiting Civil War sites (and there are plenty I’ve still yet to see here in Middle Tennessee) and reading novels set in the era, my latest passion is Regency England. While most of the history I’ve had to learn on my own, not having taken any British history courses (but plenty in British Lit!), the passion I’ve developed for learning of different times, along with the research skills honed by years of study and writing academic papers, has fueled my desire to pass on my love of history through story and character…just as those Sunfire Romance authors did for me so long ago.

6 comments:

Cindy Thomson said...

Welcome, Kaye. You are certainly among like-minded people here. I look forward to your posts!

Cindy

Tiffany Amber Stockton said...

Glad to see you here, Kaye, and I look forward to sharing the posting spotlight with you, this week.

Our paths to our passion for history are almost identical. Amazing to know someone else out there can relate to such a great extent.

Anonymous said...

Dear Kaye,

Sunfire Romances! Oh boy. I was drawn into my love of historical fiction (and school history classes) by one of those, too. JESSICA was the title, about a young woman living in Kansas, I think it was, in the late 1800s. The plot involved a young Indian brave as part of a love triangle. I also read KATHLEEN, and remember it quite well.

My maternal family are all Virginia natives, as am I, and I grew up in the Washington DC area, surrounded by all that Civil War history (I'm curious if you've read Owen Parry's Civil War mysteries, featuring Abel Jones?).

My writing interests have included 1st Century Roman/Christian/British history, Iron Age Welsh/British history and 18th Century Scottish history, but have turned to Colonial and early Federal American time periods of late--still with a strong dash of things Scottish thrown in.

We seem to have a few things in common. *s* Glad to have you here at PASTimes.

Lori

Becky said...

I also grew up reading Sunfire Romances in junior high and high school. I absolutely loved them. I think my favorites were Marilee and Jenny. Although with the exception or one or two, I read and reread them all. My other love at the time was Gone With The Wind. I must have read it a dozen times between the ages of 12 and 21. And Eugenia Price. I'm curious if anyone else grew up loving her historical romances? The Savannah series is probably my favorite of hers. Yes, history was alive in books long before history classes interested me. (Although I've always preferred history and English to math and science no matter what the age).

Kaye Dacus said...

The more and more I'm around other writers, the more and more I find women whose lives were also touched by the Sunfire romances. My favorite of all was VICTORIA and it is the book that first led me to writing, as I sat down and wrote my own sequel to it. I still have all of the originals I purchased between 1984ish through 1989 (up through about #29 or 30), but then, I graduated from high school and was reading lots of other materials. In recent years, I have completed my collection, finding gently-used or like-new copies of the titles I did not have through the internet for just a dollar or two. I haven't read them in years, but I have a niece who will be twelve this year . . . it may be about time to start her reading these books, too, especially now they're so readily available used. (What? Give her mine? You must be joking!) :-)

Wendi said...

I've just recently renewed my love of Sunfire romances. Marilee was my favorite that I read and reread and recently interlibrary loaned it to go "old school" in my reading and then I found myself purchasing 2 more that I want from Amazon. Crazy fun.