Fiction
Date Published: May 1, 2025
Publisher: Manhattan Book Group
This book's background is the prophetic but overlooked decade of American
history, 1846 to 1856, from the Mexican War to the presidential election of
James Buchanan. The decade was a foreshadowing of our national cataclysm.
Underlying every social aspect was the nation's fatal flaw, slavery, that
perverted the Constitution on which the Enlightenment ideals of a
"United States" were based. And on every day, similarities to the
distortions of the present decade are obvious.
I chose a Southern ethos, finding an unexpected woman to suffer and survive
the decade; and three brothers, each of whom carves a unique path through
it, one as a fugitive unjustly accused of murder and slave-stealing, one as
an enigmatic operative across the jagged spectrum of antebellum party
politics, and the eldest who inherits his family's storied tobacco
plantation as its lands burn out.
The story is told chronologically, the fiction adhering to the history.
Should a question arise as to which is which, any event of historical
significance - no matter how bizarre or implausible -- did indeed
happen.
The novel echoes ethnic truths as they were at the time. I write of
intimacies as well as horrors found in historical records. Both public and
private relations were often infused with their own destruction -- as were
the expanding "United States" in that decade, and I fear in this
one.
Review
This book was wholly engrossing. a riveting history giving politics and drama equal attention.
Creating suspense in recounting familiar events marks real talent in a historian; covering in detail events of history and giving his readers a real sense of wonder, even thrill. In vivid words Kinsolving lays out the landscapes of the time, not sparing the reader the gut punch of inhuman horror of the times.
About the Author
After a questionable academic career at Stanford (I mean, how practical is
a double major in Drama and Far Eastern Theology?), Kinsolving fled to the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival to play Richard II. He then attended The London
Academy of Music and Dramatic Art for polish. Returning to New York, he
appeared as an actor under-, off- and on Broadway, as well as a saloon
singer in foul Greenwich Village nightclubs. For creative diversion during
these years, he acted and/or directed back in Oregon, at the Stratford (CT)
Shakespeare Theater, Harvard, Dartmouth, Café La Mama, then went out
and won the Best Actor of the Year award from the San Francisco Chronicle
for performing at the Berkeley Rep.
Ineluctably transitioning to a second career, Kinsolving wrote a play with
84 speaking roles, was awarded a Ford Foundation Playwriting Grant, and had
the play produced by the Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival. This led to
the first of some 54 films on which he worked for every major studio (and
several distinctly minor ones) in Los Angeles, London and Rome (ask him
about Zeffirelli sometime) as screenwriter and script doctor. Suspecting
that such a life was leading to the utter corruption of his soul (not to
dare mention his body), he retreated to Carmel to write the first of five
novels (a NY Times best-seller, a couple of Literary Guild Main Selections,
he adds humbly, but only if asked).
While serving on the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of the
Arts, he regressed happily to nightclub and fundraising performances,
accompanied by the likes of Peter Duchin and Emmanuel Ax, singing at the
Algonquin Hotel’s late lamented Oak Room and for one of the late
Brooke Astor’s better birthday parties among many other less
name-dropping venues.
Last year, he directed a musical for which he wrote the book and lyrics in
the nave of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral about Johann Sebastian
Bach and his family. Bach provided all the music, and proved to be very easy
to work with. THAT WEEK WITH THE BACHS had the best voices in the Bay Area,
including the ineffable Frederica von Stade.
He began work on the historical novel DANGEROUS TIMES between the
diversions above. He knew the history, but even so, was startled by how
constant the similarities are in that destructive time to what’s going
on in this one.
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