Book People, Skylines, and the 17th

Last week I received a wonderful delayed Christmas present.

The photo is me and our next-door neighbor Mary Lou at Book People in Austin. Mary Lou and her husband Wayne have been close friends for over thirty years.  My delayed gift came from them—paying the fee and contacting the fellow at Book People to put copies of three of my books on the shelves and tables in the store.

If you are a lover of books, an hour in Book People is like an hour in heaven. The store sits on the same corner as Whole Foods and Waterloo Records, two of Austin’s commercial icons. Book People is also in the shadow of a dozen glass condo towers that have taken over Austin’s skyline. Those incredibly slender, sometimes curvy, sometimes boxy, sky-high glass fingers are surely striking, but also somewhat sad to us old geezers who liked being able to see the state capitol dome and the UT tower from anywhere in central Austin.

Regardless of the urban landscape, for the next several months, among the hundreds of titles written to appeal to a demographic that is half a century younger and dresses oh so differently, A Different Dragon Entirely, A Different Country Entirely, and Texans at Antietam will share the shelf space in the Book People store.

Hopefully the book covers will invite book shoppers to visit Texas’ pre-skyscraper, pre-flying drones, pre-hipster history—a historical past, and a more fanciful past with a flying horny-toad dragon who understands Latin.

I’ve begun a new manuscript, back to Texans in the Civil War, this time in our neighboring state of Louisiana.  My home team is Company K of the 17^th Texas Infantry, who historically were from my hometown of Lockhart, near Austin.  The novel is without a catchy title so far, but something will pop up before it’s a finished work. 

Here are photos of the 17^th’s regimental flag, which still exists, and a 17th soldier’s tin Lone Star pin that many Texans wore on their jackets or hats.

The first half of the story takes place among the dozens of cotton plantations along the west bank of the Mississippi River, across the Big Muddy from where Vicksburg is under siege by General Grant’s Union army. 

The 17^th fights in the vicious little battle of Milliken’s Bend in June, 1863, just a month before the starving Confederates surrender Vicksburg, and just before Lee’s army battles at Gettysburg.

The battle at Milliken’s Bend was small, about 1,500 soldiers on each side, but it was the very first clash between black Union soldiers recruited among the recently freed slaves from the nearby plantations, and Confederate soldiers. The fact that those Confederates were Texans who were fighting in their first battle of the war, and most of the freedmen Union soldiers had never fired their muskets before the battle, makes it even more interesting.

The whole historical story is complicated by the overt racism of the time. As I read primary sources and come across incident after incident, I understand why few modern historical novelists are willing to tackle the ugliness of that season in that place. Then there is the ugliness of the political-military issues surrounding the plantations and the valuable cotton that both sides wanted, but which both sides were willing to destroy to keep from the other side.

I’m finding the overlapping issues are complex and challenging to work into a novel that creates likable characters on all sides in a dark time where violence routinely trumped reason.

The second half of the 17^th’s story happens the following spring when the Texans fight in two big battles—Mansfield and Pleasant Hill. This time the setting is further west in The Howling Wilderness, as a Union soldier termed the dense pine forests where General Taylor’s Confederate army dueled with General Bank’s Union army in 1864.

More in future blog posts about the 17^th.