Curiosity leads to…

Oh, sure, curiosity has led to the untimely demise of hosts of felines.  But, curiosity has also launched a lot of ships…and books.

Two things I knew way too little about were the War of 1812 and Reconstruction, the attempt by the victorious US government to rehabilitate the south after the Civil War.  Time to dilute or, ideally, deflate that obscuring balloon of ignorance.  I elected to snoop into Reconstruction first.  On no more motive than curiosity, I began poking through Google for Wikipedia references and NetFlix for documentaries.  What a rich story!

But, to understand Reconstruction, I needed to better understand the flow of the Civil War leading up to it.  A quick audit of the multiple theaters of the war – the blockade (Anaconda), the river wars, the Armies of the Potomac, the northern incursions, the western campaigns – I realized I had to localize and humanize the scope.  Having visited and been charmed by Savannah, I selected it as the locus of the action.  I knew that Savannah had an historic, long-imbedded Jewish community which brought up a tributary question of how southern Jews dealt with the Civil War and slavery. 

Then, I hit the mother lode: Sherman’s treatment of Savannah when he captured it on his famous ‘march to the sea’.  Suddenly I had an embarrassment of riches from which to draw.

Now, it all came together.  ‘The Jewess of Savannah’ is a coming-of-age and coming-of-consciousness story of the era as seen through the eyes of a bright young southern belle in love with a Confederate artillery officer.  What fun it has been to write.  And, through this exercise, I came to understand that the north won the war but the south won Reconstruction by delaying its implementation for a full 100 years.