Chapter three, continued

I held in my hands a piece of family history. My great grandfather had fought in the Revolutionary War on board a privateer out of Charleston, and his part of the prize money had made him wealthy. Afterward, he had never quite trusted the ability of the new American government to keep order, so he had had this pistol made by a Williamsburg gunsmith as a wedding present for his bride. It was .36 caliber, small for the day, and he had required that it be compact enough for a lady to conceal in a purse or in the folds of her skirts. It had been built as a flintlock, with twin, side-by-side barrels.

When their son, my grandfather, entered the Navy, Great-grandmother Williams gave it to him to carry. It was two carefully aimed shots from this pistol that had stopped a charge by Tripolian pirates during a small boat action off North Africa, saving my grandfather’s life and the lives of his crew.

After Grandfather married and retired to Waterside, he gave the pistol to my grandmother. She had carried it with her whenever she went riding in the countryside, and when her son, my father, had gone out in the coasting schooner Eva, she had had it converted to percussion caps and had given it to him.

It had gone from husband to wife to son for three generations until my mother, with her Quaker repugnance for guns, had refused to take it from Father. He had taught me to shoot using this gun, and now he was passing it on to me for the protection of my sister. It was more than a weapon. It was a touch of my father’s hand across the miles, and a trust passed now into the fourth generation.

With reverence, I took the pistol out of its place in the box and examined it. As always, it was in perfect condition. I took the horn and filled the measuring cup with powder, poured it down the right barrel, then again down the left one. Two bullets wrapped in greased patches of cloth went into the barrels and were rammed carefully home. Two percussion caps went onto the nipples and I lowered the hammers carefully to half-cock.

I closed the case and put it into the bottom of my carpetbag, then hid the pistol at the back of a small drawer of my dresser, behind paper and pens where Aunt Rachel was unlikely to look.

I was asleep within thirty seconds of hitting the bed.

*****

My interest in all things maritime led me to read the Hornblower books when I was young. My interest was captured by the sailing of the ships, the strategies, and issues of leadership, but I also had to put up with sea battles and all the unpleasantness that makes up the reality of war at sea. I never cared for that part of the books, although if it had not been there, they would have sounded quite hollow.

In Lord Hornblower (as I remember; I don’t have a copy handy), Hornblower’s new wife gave him a pair of double barreled pistols fitted with then-new percussion caps. As he examined them in his cabin, he realized that that they might mean life itself in the coming conflict.

I was intrigued by the idea of the gift of a firearm as a gift of life. Later, when I was writing Voices, I dredged it up and placed in into this multigenerational context.

Chapter three, continued

“Oh,” she said, “you do have your Father’s temper after all! No, Matt, I don’t feel that way any more. I hate slavery as much as I ever did, but not slave owners.”

“Father has always been a moderate. He would see the slaves returned to Africa, if there were a way to do it. His attitude has almost cost him his seat in Congress several times.”

“I know that. I know and respect your father, but he still holds human beings in bondage and I don’t hesitate to tell him that he is wrong. So we fight, whenever we see each other. So we avoid seeing each other, because we don’t want to fight.”

Aunt Rachel broke off the conversation, and suggested that I look around a bit outside. I took the hint. Her home had been invaded almost without warning by two strangers, and she wanted to think things over in private.

I wandered around for a few minutes, peeking into the chicken coop, locating where she kept her tools, and finally paying a visit to the two horses she kept in a small corral beside the house. Then I returned to the barn, pulled the handcart up to the back stoop, and began the task of taking Sarah’s trunks up to her room. She lay under a quilt, snoring softly, and did not wake though I made four trips.

*****

Sarah was still sleeping at supper time. I had to shake her awake, and she went right back to bed after the meal. I think the tension of being moved to a new home once again, right after she had gotten used to Mrs. Davison’s school, had hit her as hard as the ride north.

The second story of Aunt Rachel’s house was split by a hallway, with two bedrooms on each side. Aunt Rachel slept at the front of the house and used the room opposite hers to store blankets and out-of-season clothing. The remaining two rooms were given to Sarah and me.

I stored my clothing in a battered chest-of-drawers and shoved my carpetbag under the bed. If I was going to stay here where I would have to do farm chores I would have to buy some rough clothing in Gettysburg. I had taken only a minimum of clothing to Mr. Harding’s house in Baltimore because I had expected to be in uniform within another month.

Finally I opened the paper wrapped package I had laid on the bed. Inside was a small mahogany box fastened with brass. I opened it and looked at the pistol in its velvet lined resting place.

I held in my hands a piece of family history.

*****

I have spent a lot of words describing Aunt Rachel’s farmhouse, many more than I normally would. The shape of the house and the placement of the rooms is of importance for events that will occur a few chapters from now, when Sarah hears voices in the night. They are the voices of escaping slaves, hidden in a secret room in the basement of the house, which is a station on the underground railroad.

Those voices are part of a double-barreled crisis that will catapult Matt into a new and massively changed life.

Chapter three, continued

Aunt Rachel put the coffee pot on the table and set out two cups. She settled in across from me and said, “Now, why don’t you tell me exactly what is going on.”

I told her of being called back from Baltimore and of Father’s fears. “He believes that if it comes to war, a lot of the fighting will be in Virginia, and that Washington City itself will be in great danger. There would be no safety there for Sarah, so he asked me to bring her here.”

“Please don’t misunderstand me, Matthew . . .”

“Aunt Rachel, people call me Matt.”

“All right, Matt. Don’t think you aren’t welcome here, but why didn’t Thomas send Sarah to live with his own sister. You must know that he and I don’t get along.”

“He said the North would be safer.”

“No, I don’t believe that. Southern Pennsylvania is right on the border between slave states and free ones.  We are more likely to have fighting here than in South Carolina where your Aunt Mary lives. There has to be another reason.”

I liked the way she went right to he heart of the problem, and I liked the way her face looked. She was alive to reality and ready to embrace the world as it really was. Aunt Mary, on the other hand, was the kind of woman Mrs. Davison would have been if she could have managed it.

I said, “I think Father considers my Aunt Mary rather empty-headed.”

She smiled briefly at some private memory, and said, “I haven’t met your Aunt Mary. What do you think of her?”

I thought back to when I had last seen her, three years ago during one of the times we were staying at Waterside. I remembered her grating voice and her endless conversations about nothing at all. I said, “I agree with Father.”

“Then perhaps she would not be the one to go to for safety.”

We drank our coffee in silence while Aunt Rachel thought it over. 

I get along well with people, mostly because Father trained me early how to put people at ease and give no offense. But that was just a thing I had learned to do. It was rare for me to feel truly at ease, but Aunt Rachel made me feel as if I had known her for years.

Out of the blue, she said, “You look like your father, but you remind me more of my sister – your mother. You have her calm. Your father was always restless; full of some kind of nervous energy. I teased him about it once. I told him he sat still at a full gallop. He didn’t like that very much.”

Aunt Rachel looked so much like my mother that everything she said took me back to childhood. I thought about how others treated Father and said, “I never knew anyone to tease Father.”

“I’m sure he would not allow it. He had too much pride for that.”

“Why don’t the two of you get along?”

She smiled sadly. “Personality and politics. We were both born stubborn, and we disagreed about slavery. My family has been of the Society of Friends since Pennsylvania was a colony, and we have always opposed slavery. You father was a slave owner. When I was younger, I thought all slave owners were sub-human beasts.”

That was hitting pretty close to home. “I hope you don’t still feel that way,” I said stiffly.

“Oh,” she said, “you do have your Father’s temper after all! No, Matt, I don’t feel that way any more. I hate slavery as much as I ever did, but not slave owners.”

Chapter Three

After Sarah had chosen a small trunk and Aunt Rachel had hustled it and Sarah upstairs, I rolled the cart into a barn and returned to the house.

The kitchen made up one back quarter of the lower floor.  Most of one wall was taken up by a huge fieldstone fireplace.  Aunt Rachel had an new iron wood-burning cook stove, but she had put it to one side of the fireplace so that a friendly fire could still be built on cold winter days. The sideboards and bin tables were scrubbed and fresh. Feed sack towels hung on the stove drying, but they were neatly hemmed, and had been patched where they had worn through. Even over Sarah’s burnt bacon, I could smell the faint odor of spices.

I had just decided to go and fetch an armload of wood to make myself useful, when she returned. She asked if I drank coffee and I said that I did. She asked me if I wanted to rest, but I had no intention of taking an afternoon nap, no matter how little sleep I had gotten.

While she talked, she worked around the kitchen, making up a fresh pot of coffee and putting right the damage Sarah’s cooking had done. As I studied her, it stirred up memories that I had thought were lost. Rachel Darby Pike. My mother had been Amanda Darby Williams.  Aunt Rachel was the younger sister, and she looked much as I remembered my mother.

I wondered why I had not seen her for all these years. I knew that she and Father did not get along, but now that I had met her, I couldn’t imagine why not. 

Thinking back, I could remember a great deal about Mother, although some of the memories were probably not my own. During those times we spent at Waterside, Father would have sudden spells of eloquence when he would talk for hours about her. He called it keeping her memory alive for me, but I am sure that he was keeping it alive for himself as well.

Mother had been a plain woman like Aunt Rachel. She was a Pennsylvania Quaker whose family had opposed slavery for over a hundred years. How she had come to marry a southern plantation owner was something even Father had never explained. Mother had not fitted in at Waterside. None of the neighbors would associate with her. It was not that she pushed her views on them; rather, her whole quiet way of living was an affront to southern society.

I suppose that I owe much of what I am to her. When I helped Mr. Dreyfus load his wagon, and called him Mr. Dreyfus, it was what Mother would have done if she had been in my place.

Aunt Rachel put the coffee pot on the table and set out two cups. She settled in across from me and said, “Now, why don’t you tell me exactly what is going on.”

*****

Since I have set Matt up for major changes in outlook, it should be apparent that this bit about his mother is a beginning of the process of making those changes believable. To change the son of a fire-breathing, slave whipping plantation owner into someone modern readers could accept would be too much of a stretch. Matt’s father is a southerner and slave owner by accident of birth, and a moderate by the standards of his day. Matt has to face major changes, but not such major changes that the reader is likely to doubt that they could happen.

Chapter two, continued

She squeezed my shoulder and laughed. It was a sound full of compassion and understanding, and there was surprising strength in her hand. In that moment, she won my heart.

Aunt Rachel put Sarah to work frying bacon. When Sarah wanted to know why the servants didn’t cook, Rachel told her that there were no servants in her house. Sarah was working up to pout again, but we didn’t stay to see it.

Aunt Rachel had a two wheeled handcart that she used to move heavy things around the yard. She showed it to me, then walked out to the crossroads and helped me load Sarah’s trunks on board, shaking her head in amazement. I explained how Sarah had lived in one boarding school after another, with no real place to call home. These trunks were her home and her security.

Aunt Rachel listened. She said, “I understand. I don’t like to criticize Thomas because I know he’s your father, but he should have done better by her.”

“He did the best he could!” I replied heatedly.

She said, “Perhaps,” but she wasn’t convinced.

When we got back to the house it was filled with the smell of burned bacon. Rachel said, “Go pick one trunk to take up to your room. Then Matthew will put the rest in the barn until later.”

“I don’t want my trunks in some old barn,” Sarah snapped.

Rachel did not respond to Sarah’s tone of voice. She just said, “Fine. They can stay on the cart, but if it rains this afternoon . . .”

“I want them in my room!”

“All right. When you finish eating, you can carry them up.”

I thought poor Sarah was going to explode. She crossed her arms with offended dignity and said, “You can’t possibly think that I am going to carry my own trunks.”

Rachel lifted the overcooked bacon onto a plate and began breaking eggs into the grease. Over her shoulder, she said, “Who is going to carry them up, then?”

Aunt Rachel busied herself around the kitchen while Sarah thought about it. By the time she had heated a half loaf of bread and put it on the table along with eggs, bacon, jam, and butter, Sarah was ready to say, “I’m sorry, Aunt Rachel.”

Rachel said, “No one expects you to carry your own trunks, because you aren’t big enough. Matthew and I will carry your things up, but not now. Matthew is as tired as you are. I can see it in his eyes. So as soon as you eat, go choose one trunk, like I said, and we will put the cart with the rest of the out of the rain. This evening, after your brother has rested, he and I will take your trunks up.”

“Thank you, Aunt Rachel,” Sarah said, but I wasn’t sure if she was really thankful or not.

Rachel was not through. She sat down and faced Sarah directly. “Sarah,” she said, “I don’t expect you to carry your trunks up because you are too little, but I will expect you to work as long as you stay in my house. I don’t have any servants here. I live alone, cook my own meals, wash my own clothes, and raise my own food. You are welcome to stay here, but it is going to take more work to keep a house going with three people in it than it does for one. You two are going to have to do the extra work. There just isn’t anyone else here to do it.”

Sarah didn’t answer. She turned back to her food with a look that would have curdled milk. Aunt Rachel didn’t seem to mind. I decided then and there that I wouldn’t worry about Sarah as long as our aunt was there to keep her in line.

Chapter two, continued

The door opened on my second knock. I had forgotten how tall she was. She was nearly as tall as Father with a raw-boned pioneer look about her. She looked as if she should have been loading her husband’s flintlock during an Indian attack in Kentucky a hundred years ago.

I had also forgotten how young she was. Her face was clear and unlined and the brown hair tied gracelessly on top of her head was without gray. I did a quick calculation. Aunt Rachel was three years younger than Mother, so she would be thirty-three this year. In my mind, I had made her short, old, and gray, but she was none of those things.

There was a moment of confusion on her face, too, then she smiled and said, “Matthew and Sarah?” I nodded.

She reached out immediately for Sarah’s hand and Sarah curtseyed. Rachel laughed and said, “None of that! Come in; come in.” She ushered us into a hallway that ran the length of the house, saying, “I got a telegram from your father, but it was very short. He said a letter would follow to explain everything, but you seem to have beaten it here, so you will have to tell me what is going on.”

How do you put the changes that have torn your life apart into a few words for a stranger? Rachel saw my distress, and said, “Well, never mind. You can tell me later. How long do you plan to stay?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe a long time.”

Her face suddenly became serious. She nodded and said, “Lincoln’s election, of course. Thomas would see it as a danger. But if he acted this quickly, things must be even worse than I thought.”

“He sees it as a great danger, Ma’m.”

For a moment she had a far-away look in her eye. Then she was all practicality again, asking us how we had come so quickly and where we had slept last night. When she found out that we had slept on the train and had had no breakfast, she started to herd us into the kitchen for some food. I interrupted to say, “I need to get Sarah’s luggage in first.”

“I wondered if you were traveling with just one carpetbag,” she said. “Why don’t you fetch her things in while we start something to eat.”

I hesitated, embarrassed, and then said, “Do you have a wheelbarrow or a cart?”

“Yes. Why?”

I pointed out the front door. She leaned past me and saw the pile of trunks making a small, tumbled mountain at the crossroads. I was cringing inwardly, waiting for her scorn, for I knew that she was a plain woman. 

Instead of making a comment about the pile of trunks, she put her hand on my shoulder and said, “How much of that is yours?”

“It is all hers.”

“You are traveling with one valise and she has all that. You have not been raised together, have you?”

“No, Ma’m.”

She squeezed my shoulder and laughed. It was a sound full of compassion and understanding, and there was surprising strength in her hand. In that moment, she won my heart.

Chapter two, continued

Southern Pennsylvania is a area of rolling hills. The pioneers had cleared much of the forest for fields, but plenty of timber remained. It must have been lovely a month earlier when the hillsides were ablaze with fall colors, but now only a few stubborn brown leaves clung to the oaks, and all the rest of the woods were gray.

The Emmitsburg Road passed southward paralleling Cemetery Ridge and a mile to the south I could see a pair of hills Dreyfus called Round Top and Little Round Top. Once he had warmed up to me, the teamster gave me a running commentary on the local sights, gossip, and politics. By the time we pulled up, I had a beginner’s understanding of the region.

(One of the benefits of historical fiction, particularly of well known times, is the amount of research material available, along with instant recognition by your readers. The flip side of this benefit is the likelihood of getting caught out if you screw up.

Years ago I came across a library book full of photographs taken days after the Gettysburg battle. It was also full of detailed maps, with notations on the maps of where each picture had been taken. I didn’t need the pictures of bodies, but the maps gave me every road, hill, orchard and farmhouse, down to the names of who lived in some of the farmhouses. Rachel Pike’s farmhouse was one of them; its actual occupants were conveniently not named.)

We stacked Sarah’s trunks at the roadside (I was getting mighty tired of those trunks!) and I waved good-bye to Mr. Dreyfus. Sarah was through pouting, but she didn’t wave. I suppose she thought a lady should be above waving to servants, but I had liked the man.

We stood at a crossroad. Behind us, both corners were in grain fields, one plowed and fallow, the other still in ragged stubble. On the corner to our left was an orchard; peaches I thought, from the shape of the naked trunks. Aunt Rachel’s house sat back from the road on the last corner. It was a substantial two story house with a widow’s walk and a wide verandah, flanked by two magnificent oak trees. There was a cluster of outbuildings behind it.

The house had a look of age, and though it had been reasonably well kept up there was just a hint of decay about it. A cracked window pane here, a few boards leaning against the side of the house where some repair had been begun and never finished, and paint that should have been renewed a few years ago – the sum of these little things gave the house a forlorn and haunted look.

Father had written to Aunt Rachel with the details of why he was sending us to her, and had sent a brief telegram in case we arrived before the letter, but of course there had been no time for a reply. It was just possible that Aunt Rachel was not here. I took my carpetbag in one hand and took Sarah’s hand in my other, and we walked up to the house.

I knocked on the door and waited. Sarah had become very quiet. She had never met our aunt. Aunt Rachel and Father had never gotten along, and it had been ten years since I had seen her.

The door opened on my second knock. I had forgotten how tall she was. She was nearly as tall as Father with a raw-boned pioneer look about her. She looked as if she should have been loading her husband’s flintlock during an Indian attack in Kentucky a hundred years ago.

Chapter two, continued

It was a long, uncomfortable night. Every time I fell asleep the swaying coach threatened to throw me to the floor. Fortunately the seat opposite us was empty, so I got Sarah stretched out there and held her in place by sitting with my heels braced against the edge of her seat, with her shoulder wedged against the sole of my boots. I doubt that Mrs. Davison would have approved.

We arrived at Gettysburg late the following morning. Sarah was awake, but irritable. I left her standing on the platform while I watched the porters take her trunks out of the baggage car.

The arrival of the train is a major event in any small town. The brightly colored engine and tender, the noise of the whistle and the rolling steam from the pistons, make a sight that few can resist. Children and dogs rushed wildly about. A teamster stood by the heads of his horses to keep them from panicking when the train pulled out again. I asked him about Aunt Rachel’s house and found out that it was on a farm two miles south of Gettysburg on the Emmitsburg Road.

The teamster’s name was Dreyfus. He looked me over with distaste, and allowed that he was heading down the Emmitsburg Road himself after he had loaded up. I was wearing a dark suit and riding boots, and looked like a Southern gentleman’s son. He was dressed in ragged shirt and trousers, with shoes that might have belonged to someone else before him. He didn’t like me, but he was willing to take my money to let us ride along with him.

When the train had pulled out and he had maneuvered his wagon up to the platform, I hung my coat on the brake lever alongside his battered hat and lent a hand with the loading. There were heavy crates of shovels and hoes, and bags of grain and seed potatoes. I think he was surprised that I chose to help him, and even more surprised that I stood up to the work. At least, when we threw Sarah’s many trunks up on top of his load, he did not make the cutting remarks I had expected.

Sarah, on the other hand, had had enough. She stood with her hands on her hips looking at the teamster’s wagon and refused to go.

“I’ve been on that old train for a whole day and a night, and I’m tired. I hurt all over and I don’t intend to go anywhere in a wagon that smells like – like what cows do! I’m going to stay right here until Aunt Rachel comes to pick us up.”

Dreyfus rolled his eyes and spat tobacco juice. I was tired myself, and in no mood for spoiled brat behavior, so I told her sharply, “Aunt Rachel doesn’t know we are here. I see no reason for Mr. Dreyfus to take your trunks out to the farm and have Aunt Rachel quit whatever she is doing, hitch up a team, and drive out here because you don’t like what his wagon smells like.”

She sat down on the edge of the platform with a theatrical flounce and pouted. All I could think of was Mrs. Davison, and I really hadn’t liked the woman all that much.

I went to the wagon, made a nest for Sarah out of empty feed sacks, and then hoisted her aboard. She squealed in protest, but I paid her no mind, except to say, “If this wagon is good enough for Mr. Dreyfus and for me, it’s good enough for you.”

Half a mile out of town, the teamster spat over the side and laughed. “Mr. Dreyfus! Man, that’s prime.”

Chapter Two

It was a long journey to Pennsylvania. Sarah was excited to be riding a train for the first time, but after hours of clinging to the narrow seat while the coach danced on the uneven track and breathing a heady mixture of soot and cinders, she fell asleep nestled against me.

To be truthful, I was as excited as she was. I had traveled by carriage from Waterside to Washington City several times, and from Washington to Baltimore by horse, but I had never gone toward the west. It was exciting just to know that I could travel by the train all the way to the Mississippi if I were free to do so. I remained alert on into the afternoon, watching the valley of the Potomac slip by at the astonishing rate of twenty miles an hour.

It was nearly nightfall when we reached the great bridge at Harper’s Ferry. On our left as we approached, one half of the bridge carried horses and wagons, while the right side carried the tracks of the railroad. As we passed beneath the roof of the bridge, the smoke from the engine boiling in through our open windows became almost unbearable.

I left Sarah asleep on the seat and stepped out onto the platform to look around. Just a year ago Harper’s Ferry had been the center of the nation’s attention as the crazed abolitionist John Brown raided the Federal arsenal there.

John Brown had not raised the slaves to revolt. He had only killed a few innocent people and they had hanged him three months later. Yet even in failure, he had succeeded. After John Brown’s raid, the South had looked northward with even greater distrust. It had made compromise even harder than before. Now the widening split between the two halves of America had led to the election of the one man the South could not tolerate.

Now, as I looked on the place where the nation’s fate had been sealed, I had no idea that I would return there in so few months. Nor, in my wildest dreams, could I ever have imagined the circumstances that would draw me there.

*****

Historical novels require accuracy, but the bar is somewhat lower than historical non-fiction. Either type of literature is subject to error. Perfection is not possible, and historians are always correcting one another.

It comes down to a balancing act between a desire for accuracy and the needs of the story, refereed by the likelihood of reader catching your error.

In this case, I sent Matt and Sarah’s train through Harper’s Ferry because I wanted to bring it into the story early. The railroad is real; in fact the Harper’s Ferry train and wagon bridge is well known among enthusiasts of early railroads. When I later found an early railroad atlas which showed that the sensible route from Washington to Gettysburg left the B & O before Harper’s Ferry, I retained the error in order to get John Brown into the story early, along with a foreshadowing of coming events.

In point of fact, Matt may not pass through or near Harper’s Ferry in chapters yet unwritten. I know he is going to return to the South on a mission he can’t even imagine at this point of the story, but his route at that point is uncertain to me now. If he doesn’t pass through Harper’s Ferry, it will be a simple thing to come back and make a slight change in this part of the ms.

Before we move on to Chapter two, here is a longer “note to self” that I dropped in with no intention of sharing it with anyone. I normally think in long, convoluted sentences and my first drafts – depending on the day and my mood – sometimes become quite dense. I spend a lot of time chopping the weeds out of my sentences so that only the grass remains.

In this brief piece, I have only cleaned things up enough to tone down the worst of the confusion.

The tone and tenor of this story will depend in part on how old Matthew is when he tells the story. If it is told as if we were looking over his shoulder as he experiences it – as it mostly is now – then it will have a callowness and lack of depth due to his immaturity. If he is looking back from age 20ish, as if he were narrating at the age he is in the prolog, it will have greater maturity. It will now have a greater sense of the depth of time, but will lose some immediacy. If he is telling the story to his grandchildren at age 70ish, he will have to explain some things to them which will be beneficial to the modern young reader, and will take away some of the stiffness and the feeling of dialect in the voices of the slaves.

He might, for example, say, “Bonnie, I know no one says Massah anymore. That’s cause there aren’t any slaves any more. It sounds funny? No there was nothing funny about it.”

This could smack of Conrad’s “Ah, youth. Pass the bottle.” but despite that it is still legitimate form of storytelling and it gives that distancing effect, that storytelling effect, that allows the author to comment on old mores, which is something the narrator can’t normally do.

If the Conrad reference is unfamiliar to you, Joseph Conrad’s story Youth is told in flashbacks by a narrator during a drinking bout some years after the events it describes. The narrator’s calls of “Ah, youth!” and “Pass the bottle!” become tedious and eventually laughable. Don’t let that scare you off, though; it is a minor flaw on a fine story.

Something I did not discuss in the “note to self” is person. Voices has to be first person; it is about Matt’s internal struggles, and no other form would work.

I normally prefer third person for its flexibility, and because it allows me to comment on the protagonist. The only other first person novel I’ve done is Raven’s Run. If I had made it third person, it would have an entirely different tone, less reflective and more hard edged. I like it like it is, but in third person it might be easier to sell.

My first real novel, Jandrax, was written in first person. It didn’t work, so I rewrote the whole thing into third person and Ballantine snatched it up. I did cheat a little. I managed to leave two chapters in first person, one as a narrated flashback, and the other presented with the feel of a folk tale.