Welcome!
Welcome to Hindsight History! —a newsletter about remembering history well and writing about it.
The biographical historical fiction novel I’m writing opens with a young, rebellious girl living on her family’s plantation in Virginia in the mid 1800’s. It ends with this same girl at 32 years old, stepping onto a ship with its bow aimed at China. In real life, she became a hero, and her name is invoked every Christmas season to raise money for international missions. I’m talking about none other than the Southern Baptist missionary, Lottie Moon.
Lottie Moon is someone who is extremely famous by those who know her. Of course I didn’t realize that until I found out who she was. As a new intern in a Southern Baptist (SB) institution, I noticed that among many SB church-goers and among every single one of their missionaries, Lottie was a legend.
If you wonder what made her a legend, there are quite a few books and articles, and even a very catchy song, about her missionary adventures, blazing through inland China to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and opening schools/refuges for girls whose feet were bound and broken. Those resources are worth reading, and I can’t advise you to listen to that charming song enough.
The Novel:
What most caught my attention about Lottie Moon was her growing up years. Much of what’s been written about her that I’ve found focuses on her life as a missionary in China. Mentions of her childhood or life before she sailed to China are usually given a single paragraph in an article or up to three chapters in a book. I am contributing a book to the world’s library about Lottie that looks at her life from when she’s 6 years old up until she’s 32. In this span of her life, she experienced some extraordinary things.
Lottie’s Virginia home was mostly led by women and worked by slaves. The schools she attended were new start-ups by Baptists, trying to give their daughters just as good an education as they gave their sons. In the North and in the South, new religions and Christian denominations sprang up and spread like a revival fire got out of control. Lottie was born into wealth and privilege but that couldn’t keep the touch of grief and loss from reaching her. When she was young, tragedy seemed to have settled on her home, claiming dear ones left and right. Her country was slowly tearing apart, threatening to finally rip in two with the Civil War right when she was trying to finish school and graduate. The swirling air of change was all around her. This environment is what I am exploring in my upcoming novel.
The Newsletter:
Skilled writers, researchers, and record keepers have preserved many anecdotes and details about Lottie and the world around her — even lists of her schoolmates and the subjects they studied in school! Because of their meticulous work throughout the past century, I have a deep well of information from which to draw as I write my novel. With all of this available, not every rabbit trail will make it into the novel:
Christmas in American homes during the Victorian era
Life for slaves on Southern plantations
There’s a lot that stays in research files or ends up on the cutting room floor (aka: my “deleted from Ch.#” Google Docs). There were also some questions that even after much research and prayer, I couldn’t find a single, definitive answer to:
Did Lottie silence the school bell by stuffing it with towels or bed sheets?
Was the revival where Lottie got saved at the local church or at her school?
When I got conflicting answers, I had to make some choices. I took some creative licenses as a historical fiction writer. These details and discussions are what I’m discussing in my newsletter.
If you’re a Lottie Moon buff, a writer trying to do justice with historical topics, or someone simply hooked on history; I am too! I write about all those things in this newsletter.
I was am a little nervous about letting people into the process of writing this book. It would be much easier, I think, to just show a finished, shiny product. But writing a book can be a lonely thing, so this newsletter is my invitation to others who are also interested in history, writing, and Lottie. I hope it will be helpful to you or at least brighten a Monday.
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The monthly newsletter starts on Monday, December 20. Subscribe now and invite others along!