1632 (67 page)

    Leaving aside possible errors on my part—which I strove mightily to avoid—the historical setting of this novel is accurate. The town of Badenburg is my invention, as are all the German characters, such as Gretchen Richter, whose social class puts them beyond the reach of history’s notice. The rest of the places mentioned are real, as are all of the major historical figures such as Gustavus Adolphus and his generals, Axel Oxenstierna, Tilly and Wallenstein and
their
generals, John George of Saxony, Cardinal Richelieu and Emperor Ferdinand II. The Scottish officer Alexander Mackay is fictitious, but the prominent role of Scotsmen in Gustav Adolf’s army was very much as I depict it. Likewise, while Rebecca and Balthazar and all the other specific members of the Abrabanel family who figure in the novel are my creations, the Abrabanel family itself is not. The Abrabanels were, indeed, one of the great families of the dispersed Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal.

 

    More generally, the American characters who populate
1632
are all figments of my imagination. But I like to believe they are a faithful portrait of the American people. Part of the reason I chose to write this novel is because I am more than a little sick and tired of two characteristics of most modern fiction, including science fiction.

 

    The first is that the common folk who built this country and keep it running—blue-collar workers, schoolteachers, farmers, and the like—hardly ever appear. If they figure at all, it is usually as spear carriers—or, more often than not, as a bastion of ignorance and bigotry. That is especially true of people from such rural areas as West Virginia. Hicks and hillbillies: a general, undifferentiated mass of darkness.

 

    The second is the pervasive cynicism which seems to be the accepted “sophisticated” wisdom of so many of today’s writers. (Not all, thankfully.) I will have no truck with it. Of all philosophies, cynicism is the most shallow and puerile. People may choose to believe that no young man like Jeff Higgins would ever make the decision concerning Gretchen which is portrayed in the novel. Yet that episode, like many in the book, was inspired by real life. A young American infantryman, who encountered a prostitute caring for her family during the Italian campaign in World War II, made exactly the same decision—and, like Jeff, made it within hours. Do not ask me his name, or where he came from, because I do not remember. I ran across the story in a history book which I read as a teenager. The specifics I forgot long ago, but I never forgot the incident. He may have been a boy from West Virginia or Kansas—but he could just have easily have come from the mean streets of New York. If there is one human characteristic which truly recognizes neither border, breed nor birth, it is the courage to face life squarely.

 

    As for the coal miners who are central to the story, people may think the portrait unrealistic. That is their problem, not mine. I never had the honor of being a member of the United Mine Workers of America. But in my days as a trade-union activist, I had many occasions to work with the UMWA and its members. I know the union and its traditions, and those traditions are alive and well. That is as true of the Navajo miners in the southwest and the strip miners in Wyoming as it is of the Appalachian core of the union. I began this book by dedicating it to my mother, who comes from that Appalachian stock. Let me end by rededicating it to UMWA Local 1972 of Sheridan, Wyoming, especially to Dan Roberts and Ernie Roybal; and to Maurice Moorleghen, who came up from District 12 in southern Illinois to lend a hand.

Eric Flint
East Chicago, Indiana
August 1999

     

     

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