| From
the November/December 2002 issue of The Horn Book Magazine
Editorial
Opening Questions
 n
putting together the special “Making History” issue
of the Horn Book you hold in your hands, we sent the following
essay question to a number of notable authors of historical fiction,
nonfiction, and biography:
In your research and writing of historical fiction
as well as nonfiction, you must find yourself asking questions for
which corresponding answers cannot be found. These can range from
the philosophical (“Why is there war?”) to the particular
(“Where did the Roanoke colonists go?”); from the speculative
(“What was she thinking?”) to the rhetorical
(“What was she thinking?”). Here is what we would like
to know from you: from your research for your books, what unanswered
question haunts — or just bugs — you the most? If you
could go back to eighteen-ought-whatever and wherever, what would
your first question be? Who would you ask?
Still periodically nagged by reference-desk questions
that stumped me years ago, I suppose I was anticipating responses
speaking to questions of historical lacunae, both obscure and well
known. Maybe I even secretly hoped that someone could tell me just
what happened to Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan on July 2, 1937,
the mystery that sparked my own childhood curiosity.
My digital World Book says that Earhart
and Noonan “probably crashed into the ocean and died.”
If so, they aren’t the only ones doused with cold water. Thank
God for writers, who can see that probably leaves plenty
of room. As the sixteen respondents to our query show, both here
in their essays and in their books, open questions are what keep
them writing. They are what keep us reading, too. One impressive
thing about Russell Freedman’s biographies, just to take one
example, is that his subjects live on in your head long after you’ve
finished reading. When Jennifer Armstrong wonders what Abraham Lincoln
would make of his legacy, or Diane Stanley imagines how Leonardo
da Vinci would do at RISD, they are each asking one question while
answering another. They are telling us that these men matter because
we still have questions for them.
Several of our essayists have questions for people
who have been forgotten by history, whether the African-American
Philadelphians of 1793 Jim Murphy looks for, or the Famine “ghosts”
sought by Susan Campbell Bartoletti. Other writers — Sarah
Ellis, Katherine Paterson — try to hear the voices of characters
they’ve imagined, knowing that history has provided the stage
but not the script. But historical figures and fictional characters
alike provoke questions, and stories, that put them in a time and
place which, if the author knows what she’s doing, could be
no other.
You’ll notice that few of the questions posed
in this issue have cut-and-dried answers. You might even begin to
suspect that finding the answer is not exactly the point. Does anyone
seriously believe that Jean Fritz, having asked Eleanor Dare what
happened at Roanoke, would really stop there? Surely there is more
to the story.
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