Using Personal Experiences

Miss Carol Smith

One of the cool things about writing historical fiction is the chance to use your own experiences in the story.  Case in point, Miss Carol Smith.  Miss Smith is a character appearing in all three of my novels.  She plays a very important role in Ikons and lesser roles in the other other two.  She is introduced in Ikons as Rockdale's school teacher.  Her basis was my third grade teacher at Rockdale Public, Miss Smith.  Other than being a school teacher, I knew very little about her, even her first name.  All I really remember about her is, she was strict.  All business.  From her I built a forceful woman who was not afraid to take on anyone, even a big time banker.

Miss Smith, 1950 (That's me in the stripped shirt.)

"Miss Smith was dressed in a simple gray dress that began with a high, white starched collar and ended just above the ankle of her high button shoes.  Her small, round face was topped by jet-black coiffure in the Gibson girl style.  She walked perfectly erect, shoulders back, head high, with just a suggestion of sway in her bustle.  Massey studied her closely and thought she might even be attractive if she smiled.  However, she did not smile or exchange pleasantries.  She simply acknowledged his promptness and ushered him into the pallor."

Miss Carol Smith as she appears in 1912

Miss Smith's name came from the teachers I knew whose name was Carol.  It sounded good and was easy to remember.  I suppose I could have found out what my teacher's name was, but may have opened me to a libel suit or something like that.  So, Carol it was.  As my saga progressed, Miss Smith took on roles other than a school teacher, becaming an avid supporter of women's suffrage and immigrant rights.

I gave an Ikons talk to a book club made up of retired teachers.  They all enjoyed my strong, teacher character and said they could imagine themselves in her situation.

Show, Don't Tell

An attempt at good writing 

A well known and oft repeated writing axiom is "Show, don't tell."  As a wanna be writer, I strive to let my words show.  One of my better examples, I hope, is a scene where my character Stepha is starving.  Now I could have writen, "Stepha is starving," but that would have been the easy way out.  So in classic writer's style I showed the reader Stepha's circumstances.

What most people leave

To do so I conjured up at memory of my father eating an apple.  One afternoon, I dropped in at my father's barber shop as he was eating lunch.  The last item in his pail was an apple.  As I watched he ate the fruit down to the core and continued until only the stem remained.  In my youthful brashness I blurted out, "Yuk, you ate the whole thing, seeds and all."

He nodded and flipped the stem into the trash.

"How's come you did that,?" I asked

He replied, "Habit."

I used that memory to construct the scene in Slogans where the villagers are being transported out of Russia to Poland.  Food is scarce and the women have been ordered to let the their children starve to death and save themselves.  In an act of love and defiance, Akulina fed her sons and went hungry.  This is how the scene unfolded to illustrate Stepha's hunger and Akulina's love.

An apple of life

"In another time and place he would have flung the apple into the compost heap to enrich next season’s crop.  At best Stepha would have taken his knife and peeled away the fungus spots, cored the rotten center and dug out the worm holes leaving only the rich meat.  But he was not somewhere else.  So yesterday, when in the car's dim light Mati reached beneath her skirt and miraculously produced the two sorry apples, both he and Vanya grabbed the fruits and clutched them against their chests.  Slowly Stepha brought the blemished orb to his mouth and sunk his teeth deep into its softness and with his lips sucked the juice and devoured his treasure; core, seeds, stem, and worm."

Real Life Characters - Part 2

Florence Simonton Farnsworth

Doktora Farnsworth is a fictitious British doctor who appears in my third novel Slogans.  She is a combination of two very strong women: Florence Farmborough, an Englishwoman who served in World War One with the Russian army, and an anonymous Russian doctor who saved two young Austrian girls from a horrible fate.

* * *

"The woman doctor stared at Kataya's comrades and saw their heads turn in shame.  In a flash, her riding crop lashed out across the tall soldier's back.  The other four tried to scramble away but the doctor was too fast.  She waded into their ranks and rained blow upon blow down on their backs as one would to a pack of dogs, and like oft beaten dogs, the men cowered and took the beating without a whimper.  Kataya's comrades had joined an ever-growing number of Russian soldiers who discovered Doctor Florence Simonton Farnsworth would not tolerate the abuse of women."

* * *

Florence Farmborough

Several generations before Helen Reddy belted out the lyrics to "I Am Woman," a young Englishwoman showed mettle few men could equal.  At the age of 21, Florence Farmsborough left her home in Buckinghamshire, England to teach English in Russia.  Six years later, in 1914, she volunteered as nurse in the Russian Army.  For the next four years she ministered to military and civilian sick and wounded.  All the while, Florence carried her notebook and camera, chronicling what she witnessed.  In 1974 she wrote and published her photos and commentaries under the title, With the Army of the Tsar: A Nurse at the Russian Front in the War and Revolution, 1914-1918.  I used her vivid descriptions of that era as the basis for many of my stories in Banners.  In my third book, Slogans, Florence became the English doctor serving along side Kataya and Doctor Zhivago.

Florence Farmsbrough

The end of World War One was not the end of the real Florence's military career.  She went on to serve with General Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil and the Women's Voluntary Service in the Battle of Britain.  For a full history of this great woman's life, Google her.  After one hell of a ride, Florence stopped roaring in 1978 at the age of 91. 

Russian nurses sleeping under a haystack on the Eastern Front
Photo by Florence Farmbrough

 Russian Medical Officer

In the spring of 1945 the Russian's counteroffensive against Germany had rolled across Eastern Europe into Austria.  Following fierce fighting, the Reds captured Vienna and its surrounding suburbs and had moved beyond.  Soon after the gunfire ceased, twenty year-old Elfriede Schonarer and her younger sister Elsie ventured from the safety of their cellar in a search for food.  Their scavenging had just begun when they heard the dreaded words, "Frau komm!"  The soldiers now surrounding the two were not from the disciplined battalions of front line troops who had continued on against the Nazi war machine, but rear echelon rabble bent on punishing Germans in the worse possible ways.

Elfriede and Elsie's fate seemed sealed as the two were herded into bombed out structure.  Elfriede halted and stepped toward her attackers determined to be the first victim, thus perhaps sparing her sister.  As Elfriede closed her eyes and rough hands pawed her, there boomed the sound of a female voice shouting, "Sobakie - Dogs," accompanied by the thud of impacted flesh.  Elfriede opened her eyes to the sight of a female Russian medical officer slashing her countrymen across their faces and backs with a horse whip.  Again the doctor shouted and again her blows fell, forcing the men to retreat.

In halting German, the officer calmed the two sisters and offered them her protection.  "You are my aides," she told them, "stay with me and you will be safe."

Russian Medical Officer - 1945

Several months later, Vienna was divided into four Allied occupation zones. The Schonarer home fell into that governed by the United States.  At a dance attended by servicemen from the various occupiers, Elfriede met an enlisted man from the United States.  Eventually, PFC John Pribish won the heart of the Austrian woman and brought her back to America as my aunt.  All this thanks to heroism of an unknown Russian medical officer.

Elfriede Schonarer Pribish

I hope my character, Doctor Florence Simonton Farnsworth, does these two women justice.