Anne E. Johnson on Finding your genre

 

Today's guest blogger is Anne E. Johnson, whose newest book, "Franni and the Duke," is a middle-grade historical mystery novel. In May of 1608, the Duke of Mantua will throw the most spectacular wedding extravaganza in history. But it will all be ruined unless twelve-year-old Franni can keep a very big secret. "Franni and the Duke," a middle-grade novel, sets a fictional mystery against a specific historical backdrop. It takes place during rehearsals for Arianna, an opera by the great composer Claudio Monteverdi. When Franni and her older sister Alli run away to Mantua, they both find work in Monteverdi's company. A messenger from the north announces that the next duke of the town of Bergamo is missing, and he may well be in Mantua. Alli notices that Luca, a singer she's in love with, fits the missing Duke's description. Although Franni thinks Luca is a pompous idiot, she promises for Alli's sake to keep Luca's secret safe and protect him from bounty hunters and Bergamo's rival family. She does this with the help of the company's set designer, a worldly wise and world-weary dwarf named Edgardo, who is not exactly what he seems. Most of my published fiction is speculative — science-fiction and fantasy. Franni and the Duke is only my second work of historical fiction. Those who have known me for a while think of it as a logical genre, maybe the more logical genre for me to work in. For sixteen years I taught music history and theory at an undergraduate certificate program in New York City. The only thing that could have pulled me away from that work was writing fiction. Around 2008 I started getting interested in writing, particularly for kids under age 13. I took a basic course with the Institute for Children's Literature. Most of the little assignments were fun and interesting, but the final project really got me fired up. I was supposed to write the first three chapters of a children's novel. At the time, I was still teaching while working toward a PhD in Medieval musicology. I wrote the opening of a novel about a boy in the 13th-century England and his adventures seeking the stolen page of a book of Gregorian chants. Although I never finished my doctorate, I did finish that novel. Trouble at the Scriptorium was published in 2012. Claudio Monteverdi With Franni and the Duke, I took a different approach. I was determined to work some real historical people into the plot. Claudio Monteverdi is a favorite composer of mine, and one whom even most fans of classical music underrate in terms of his importance. Of course, in my music history classes, I could clearly explain this to my captive audience. Monteverdi's was the first composer to develop the art of orchestration, using the timbers of different instruments for their emotional impact, and using rhythm and harmony to express the text of vocal music. That’s why his operas are still considered great today. Yes, Franni is a mystery about a missing duke, but woven into the plot is all kinds of historical information about Monteverdi, who is a character in the story. Much of the story revolves around rehearsals for his opera Arianna, from 1608. That opera no longer exists. All we have is a single aria (song) from it (listen to that aria here), plus some descriptions of the elaborate production. The production itself is half the fun of learning about this opera. It was financed by Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of Mantua, Italy, whom I also include as a character. Franni meets both these historical men while she sews costumes for the opera. It was a thrill to do research on and then describe the duke’s exquisite palazzo, which still stands in Mantua. Writing historical fiction requires delving into a whole new world. Sort of like science fiction, if you think about it. You can learn more about Anne E. Johnson’s books and stories on her website.

Call in the Cavalry!

 

 

Buford's tombstone in the cemetery at West Point. (photo taken by the author)

Cavalry officer John Buford played a key role in the opening day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Six months later, he was dead of typhoid fever. 

Buford was born in Kentucky, but had moved to Illinois before being appointed to West Point. He graduated in 1848 and was posted to the dragoons, a word used for mounted infantry, where he saw some action along the frontier and in the expedition against the Mormons in Utah in 1857-1858. Henry Sibley and Edward Canby, who would later face off against each other in the Civil War Battle of Valverde, were also involved in the Mormon Campaign. 

Buford began the Civil War serving in the staff of the defenses around Washington D.C. He then received a position on Pope's staff in northern Virginia, where he was rewarded a brigadier's star and command of a brigade of cavalry. Two of his brigades initiated the fighting northwest of Gettysburg. Buford managed to hold off the Confederate assaults until Union infantry enabled General Meade to make a stand south and east of the town on the next two days. 
        Buford contracted typhoid and had to relinquish his command on November 21, 1863. He was promoted to major general of volunteers just before he died in Washington on December 16, 1863.

---

Contrary to what her students' used to to believe, Jennifer Bohnhoff is not old enough to have known John Buford personally. She taught New Mexico history to 7th graders in Albuquerque and in Edgewood New Mexico before retiring to write full time. She is the author of The Bent Reed, a novel set at Gettysburg and a trilogy of historical novels about the Civil War in New Mexico entitled Rebels Along the Grande and other titles for middle grade through adult readers..

America's First Revolutionary

 

 

By The Architect of the Capitol (http://www.aoc.gov/cc/art/nsh/popay.cfm) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

When you think of American Revolutions, do you think of Americans fighting a foreign overlord in order to avoid excessive taxes, worship and live as they please, and follow their own form of government?

Do you think of Paul Revere, George Washington, and Nathaniel Hale?

Does 1776 come to mind?

Although the first American Revolution was about taxation and freedom of religion, it wasn't fought by colonists in the 13 colonies that hugged the eastern seaboard, and it wasn't a battle with England. America's first freedom fighters were Puebloan Indians, who rose up against their Spanish overlords in 1680. Their leader was a man named Popé.


The Spanish Empire expanded into the New World soon after Christopher Columbus "discovered" it in 1492. By 1540, they began exploring what is now Arizona and New Mexico. By the time Juan de Onate settled, in 1598, the Spanish had imposed themselves on over 100 Indian settlements, which they called pueblos because they reminded the Spaniards of villages back in Spain. The Puebloans were not a single people. Although they were all settled rather than nomadic, they spoke a number of different languages and had different religions and cultures.

From the very beginning, the actions of the Spanish towards the Puebloans were harsh and repressive.  Oñate put down resistance from the Acoma pueblo by chopping a foot off every man over fifteen and enslaving the rest of the population. Priests set up missions next to pueblos, forcing the people to build churches and punishing them if they practiced their own ancient religions. Soldiers imposed the encomienda system, a forced-labor system similar to the serfdom of medieval Europe.

In the 1670s, a drought swept through the region, causing famine and increased raids by the Apaches, which Spanish and Pueblo soldiers were unable to prevent. Spanish and Indian alike were reduced to eating leather cart straps. Desperate for rain, the Puebloans turned to their gods, causing the Governor to arrest 47 Puebloan leaders on charges of witchcraft in 1675. Four medicine men were sentenced to death by hanging. The remaining men were publicly whipped and sentenced to prison. One of those men was Popé, a medicine man from Ohkey Owingeh (which the Spanish had renamed San Juan).

After eighty years, the Indians had had enough. Despite their different languages, the Puebloan leaders coordinated their attack to begin everywhere at once. Runners carried knotted ropes like the one in the statue's hand to mark the days until the revolt was to occur. When two of those runners were captured and tortured into revealing the date of the uprising, its leaders decided to start it early.

On August 10,1680, the Puebloans attacked. By August 13, all the Spanish settlements in New Mexico had been destroyed. 21 Franciscan friars and more than 400 Spaniards had died, but over a thousand survivors managed to make it to safety in the governor's palace in Sante Fe, and later escaped to El Paso, Texas, where they would bide their time until they could retake New Mexico twelve years later.

The Spanish were never able to eradicate Puebloan culture and religion. After the reconquest, they issued land grants to each Pueblo and appointed public defenders to protect the rights of the Indians and argue their legal cases in the Spanish courts. The Franciscan priests stopped trying to impose a theocracy on the Puebloans, who were now allowed to practice their traditional religion

Popé's statue stands in the Capitol Building in Washington DC. He was able to unite a disparate group of peoples and lead the most successful Indian uprising in the history of the West. The success of the Pueblo Revolt could be one reason why the Pueblo peoples continue to remain in their ancient ancestral homes instead of in distant reservations, why they are self governing, and can freely practice their religion.

Like primary sources? Click here for a transcript of a letter, dated September 8, 1680, in which the governor and captain-general of New Mexico, Don Antonio de Otermin, gives an account of what happened to him during the uprising.

The author of several novels, Jennifer Bohnhoff teaches New Mexico History to 7th graders in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Birthday Cake!

 

Today's my birthday, and I'm celebrating by sharing one of my favorite cake recipes with you.

Before I was born, by mother taught 5th grade in the little town of Anthony, New Mexico. Back then, school lunch ladies made all the cafeteria food from scratch. When my mother got this recipe from the school lunch lady in Anthony, it needed several pounds of flour and sugar and served hundreds. She cut it down to a reasonable size to feed her family of six, and then I cut it down further. We've called it Crazy Chocolate Cake, although I've seen similar recipies with many different names.

What makes this cake crazy is what also made it cheap and easy to make when there was little in the larder: instead of being leavened by eggs, this cake uses baking soda vinegar to make the carbon dioxide that leavens it. The result is a moist, rich cake that's easy to make. It's virtually foolproof, too.

For more information on chemical leavenings, see this blog.

 Crazy Chocolate Cake

1 1/2 cup flour
3 TBS cocoa
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1 tsp baking soda

Put all ingredients into an 8" square pan and mix together with a fork.

Mix together in a 2 cup measuring cup, then pour over the dry ingredients and mix. Be sure not to leave powdery pockets in the corners:

6 TBS salad oil
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup water
1 TBS vinegar

Bake in a 350 oven for about 30 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back after you have pressed it with your finger. Frost with vanilla or chocolate butter frosting or a chocolate glaze.

Lighten up! A short history of chemical leavening

 

 

Bread wasn’t always as easy to bake as it is now. Bread gets its airy structure by capturing gas bubbles in the elastic gluten of wheat. But how does one get those gas bubbles into the dough to begin with? The answer is leavening.

One way to leaven bread is through the use of chemical mixtures that produce gas. Pearlash is an early chemical leavening first used in breads and baking in the 1780s. Like soap, gunpowder, and potash, it is a byproduct of lye, which comes from fireplace ashes that have been soaked in water. Mix pearlash with sour milk, vinegar, or another acid, and it produces carbon dioxide bubbles that make bread and other baked goods rise.

In 1840, a chalk-like chemical leavener named saleratus entered the market. It was sold in paper envelopes similar to the ones now used for yeast and is chemically similar to baking soda, which became commercially available in the 1860s.

None of these chemical mixtures came without controversy. The August 15, 1853 edition of The Adams Sentinel and General Advertiser, a paper produced in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, explained the process of making both pearlash and saleratus, but ends with a warning:

What is saleratus? Wood burnt to ashes. Ashes are lixiviated -- lye is the result . Lye is evaporated by boiling -- black salts are the residuum. The salts undergo a purification by fire, and the potash of commerce is obtained. By another process, we change the potash into pearlash. Now put this into sacks, and place them over a distillery wash-tub, where the fermentation evolves carbonic acid gas, and the pearlash absorbs and renders it solid, the product being heavier, dryer and whiter than the pearlash. It is now saleratus. How much salts of lye and carbonic acid can a human stomach bear and remain healthy, is a question for the saleratus eaters.

Tomorrow my blog will feature an old fashioned baking soda and vinegar cake recipe handed down to me by my mother.

---

Photo borrowed from The American Philosophical Society's webpage. Visit here for five interesting blogs on the history of cooking.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is the author of a number of middle grade historical fiction books, including The Bent Reed, which is set at Gettysburg during the Civil War. You learn more about her books and her adventures in historical cooking here.