Abraham Lincoln: The Enigmatic President

  The story of the greatest rivalry in American History Read all about it! Read the full review here .

Writing my previous post on Fiction’s Role in History, I ran across an Inside Higher Ed article titled Why Historical Fiction Matters . The author, Steven Mintz, lost me in the third paragraph when he wrote, The fact that many of the genre’s best-known practitioners—like Howard Fast, James Michener, Margaret Mitchell, Leon Uris, Gore Vidal and Herman Wouk—wrote for a popular audience didn’t help the classification’s reputation. The sentence displayed academic elitism, as if anything popular was common and base. I'll bet Mr. Mintz likes Shakespeare without realizing that he was the equivalent of a primetime television scriptwriter. He wrote plays that would draw an audience, the bigger the better. Shakespeare had about forty people's livelihoods in his ink-stained hands. If he wrote a flop, his cast and crew didn't eat. The comment reminded me of Raymond Chandler's quote above. Read all about it!

History is something you don’t mess with. Or, at least, you shouldn’t. Something happened. Whatever it was, it was in the past and cannot be changed. People living in the present need to know what happened in the past, so historians document and teach history. If what a person communicates did not happen as told, then it is fiction. If historic events happened precisely as told, but the narrator depicts undisclosed motives, thoughts, or words of the participants, then it remains fiction. History is an attributed description of what happened; fiction is storytelling. Storytelling is powerful. Philip Pullman said, “Thou shall not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.” War and Peace , Uncle Tom's Cabin , Gone with the Wind , Animal Farm , Les Misérables , The Pillars of the Earth and many more attest to Pullman’s wisdom. Presenting history as a story leaves an enduring impression on the reader's mind. It should be the correct impression. This is why the historic...

Characterization is a crucial element of fiction. Novelists must know the people they write about, or they may behave in ways contradictory to their personality. Historians don’t generally try to get inside a subject’s head, while a novelist thrives in invading others’ privacy. A novelist makes personality and motivations central to the story.  Before I write the first word of a historical novel, I read several biographies of the major characters to get a perspective on their distinctiveness. I read positive and negative perspectives to get a grasp of who these people were. Where do you find these personal descriptions of historical figures? First, I go to history books. Historians do not normally try to portray their subject’s thoughts and feelings, but they don’t ignore personality. Good ones dutifully quote contemporary descriptions of the subject to satisfy documentation requirements. The second place I go to is to the historical figures’ own writing. A person’s writing always ...

While a work of deftly crafted fiction, Maelstrom is based on historical events and personalities and brings the reader into the center of the what would become the American Civil War. As a novelist, James Best has an extraordinary and genuine flair for the kind of character and narrative driven storytelling style that is ideal for an historical novel. A riveting read from start to finish, Maelstrom is unreservedly recommended for the personal reading lists of readers with an interest in the Civil War era and the roles played by Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, as well as community library Historical Fiction collections. Jim Cox Midwest Book Review

The Historical Novel Society judged Maelstrom as "polished, authoritative historical fiction with clear thematic ambition and solid craft." Complete Comments This is a confident and historically grounded opening that immediately signals seriousness of intent. Beginning with the photographic sitting at Abraham Lincoln’s appointment with Mathew Brady is a smart choice: it frames image-making, reputation, and political self-fashioning as thematic pillars before moving into the Cooper Union speech. The recreation of the address is strong, and the rhythm of the quoted passages carries authentic moral weight. The historical detail—gaslight counts, architectural layout, political context—feels well researched without becoming pedantic. Characterisation of Lincoln is respectful yet human. His physical awkwardness contrasted with intellectual command works well, and the moment where he anticipates shifting from legal to moral argument adds welcome internal tension. Where the chapter c...