This is topic Lisel: oral interview notes > outline for family history documentary in forum Fragments and Feedback for Books at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.
Godfrey, his wife Barbara, and their toddler Lisel were caught in the Peshtigo Fire of October 8, 1871. To survive, they went into the Peshtigo River. After the fire, Barbara gave birth to a stillborn son and used her skirt to hang him in a surviving tree because the ground was too hot. After the fire Godfrey built a homestead on Carney Boulevard in Marinette. Lisel caught a fever and was crying for dolly, but her parents could not find it anywhere. The day that Lisel died in January 1873 the family dog disappeared. They found the dog dead on Lisel’s grave three days later. Godfrey and Barbara never told the other children about Lisel. Years later, a handyman found a rag doll inside a wall of the house. Godfrey and Barbara hugged each other and cried. “She never walked, she danced,” Barbara told her grown children.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
You suggested a book (On the Corner of Bitter...). Did you want your Carney Boulevard book to be like that book? I don't even know what to call that genre.
I think starts should fit the genre/reader, so it's reasonable that whatever start you finally select should appeal to that reader. And you might be the only one here who can judge that.
For example, the focus normally would be on will-they-survive. You story might be what-was-it-like-to-be-them.
Posted by Challenge (Member # 11238) on :
Yes, Jamie Ford's book showed me what is possible, and I can't think of a genre for it either. In his email response to my inquiry, he said that he wrote it to explore his father's childhood after he died. The 150th anniversary of the Peshtigo Fire is coming up in October 2021, so I have less than two years to write some kind of documentary memorial for my ancestors who survived on both sides of my father's family. The other side survived by burying themselves in the fields, following the advice of Native Americans in the area.
Posted by Jay Greenstein (Member # 10615) on :
quote:Yes, Jamie Ford's book showed me what is possible, and I can't think of a genre for it either.
So assuming you sell it, where will they shelve it?
That aside, the Ford book doesn't begin with a history lesson, as this excerpt does. It first places the reader in the middle of the street, and then whets their curiosity, making them receptive to to the info-dump of backstory that comes next by giving it context for the reader.
Posted by EmmaSohan (Member # 10917) on :
I don't like Ford's start, so I'm not sure that has to be the model.
Exciting project, Challenge. Seems really difficult, but that attracts me. Burying themselves? Really?
Just a thought, but you could include people dealing with modern fires, to show the contrast. Like, your ancestors had to be independent. And their life was hard. But I guess