The Strands of Historical Fiction: Documentation, Analysis, and Storytelling in The Darkness Under the Water

摘要

Fiber and fabric, story and string... When listen-ing and writing, I look at the world in terms of thernstitches and connections taught by my mother. Then I bind together my mother's heartstrings and my father's analytical mind, and my own third strand, that of love for the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.rnI can't explain the research and binding together of The Darkness, Under the Water without showing you the King-dom. Its name dates to a political moment in the 1940s, but its nature is as old as bedrock and river. Isolated from the rest of Vermont by the northern spine of the Green Mountains, it extends on a map eastward, as if to absorb some unwanted portion of New Hampshire; the Connecti-cut River binds the eastern edge. Three counties crouch here: Caledonia, Essex, and Orleans. The county names, which are Scottish, English, and French, speak of the three prominent strands of European settlers who laid a grid on the land and labored to divide it among rocky hill farms, villages, and working forest land, for timber harvests and hunting, trapping, and fishing.