Radical Abolitionists
The story of a young enslaved man maturing with conflicting loyalties parallels the nation’s story of slavery and abolition.
Testimony of Work and Interaction
This cold morning, I am grateful to the midwife who worked in Rigby, Idaho in the winter of 1916. My father, A. Ray Tolman was born into a Mormon enclave in a house with no electricity. My grandmother told stories of how the warm water beside her birthing bed steamed and then froze in the sub-zero temperature. Their stories were framed by children, seasons, and weather conditions. I do the same as I write The Compromise: An American Novel.
Beginning in the Dark
Something comes first in a coming-of-age novel. Like a living thing, it is only small and simple for a moment. It expands and grows more complex with each word. Writing has been an exquisite task, such that I might wish drafting to never end. Revising the opening yet again, has reinforced the mind’s nonlinear capacities….
Fourth of July Declamation
The nation’s ideals continue to be questioned through acts of civil disobedience. I also respond as I write and revise my fiction, including the chapter “Awaken the Nation” about a Fourth of July declamation at the female academy. I continue to intensify my characters’ responses to injustice, one’s brave disruption and another’s equally brave mercy.
Pioneers 1847
She lives to become a wife and mother, a pioneer woman in the flesh of my history. In the first storm of January 1847, a rider came up the road, bundled against the wind and hunched in the saddle. It was not George, who always sat tall with his hat pulled low, so I stood…