It’s All in the Details

We at TeachingAuthors have been writing about giving thanks, especially as it relates to writing.  

Actually, I’m thankful for writing itself through the ages.  As the author of nonfiction books, I base all of my research on primary source documents.   I’m grateful that for hundreds of years, people have recorded details of their lives. Wealthy and poor people, famous and non famous people, generals and soldiers, mothers and fathers wrote books, letters and diaries that are gold mines of information.    

Not only have people written about their lives through the years, they and their families kept their letters and diaries.  When you write about history today, the details eyewitnesses record can make a nonfiction book come to life.  

To show you how details from life hundreds of years ago gives life to a book, let me give you an example from my new book Buried Lives: The Enslaved People of George Washington’s Mount Vernon.   

My newest book-released December 18, 2018.
NEXT MONTH THIS WILL BE OUR TA BOOK GIVEAWAY.  

Many years after George Washington was President and lived in the capital city of Philadelphia, his step-grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, wrote about those days.  In his memoir titled Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, Custis remembered Hercules, the main cook at the President’s House-and a man who was owned and enslaved by George Washington.  Custis was a child at the time and knew Hercules well.  Custis later wrote about how Hercules worked to prepare the weekly state dinner.   I write about Hercules in my book.  I quote from Custis who described Hercules as he worked in the kitchen in Philadelphia. He wrote that while preparing state dinners Hercules: 

“shone in all his splendor . . . . It was surprising the order and discipline that was observed in so bustling a scene.  His underlings flew is all directions to execute his orders, while he . . . seemed to be everywhere at the same moment.”  

George and Martha Washington raised her grandson, George Washington Parke Custis-who later wrote a book about his recollections of his life with Washington.

This detail about Hercules was priceless to me.  I was able to write about Hercules as a gifted chef at the top of his game.  With details like these and others, I hope a reader hears the clang of pots and feel the heat of the fire in the hearth as Hercules cooks.  My book is filled with details from eyewitnesses who wrote about events and I could not have known them any other way.  Using primary sources, I could write about Hercules and put a reader in the room with him more than 200 years later.  

In this scene in Buried Lives, I want contemporary readers to catch a glimpse into the life of Hercules, an enslaved man-who happened to be owned by the President of the United States.  

The written word is powerful.  If used effectively, the details of kitchen long ago can be a meaningful as the sweetest verse of poetry.   

Carla Killough McClafferty

ANNOUNCING THE THE WINNERS OF OUR BOOK GIVEAWAY FOR THE NEWLY REVISED

WRITING PICTURE BOOKS BY ANN PAUL. 

CONGRATULATIONS!  KAITLYN S. AND REBECCA A.

Next Month Our Book Giveaway Will Be:

BURIED LIVES: THE ENSLAVED PEOPLE OF 

GEORGE WASHINGTON'S MOUNT VERNON. 

(Starred Review In Booklist!)