By Anita Mae Draper
Raise your hand if you've read a piece of
historical fiction and found fault with it. Can you see both my hands waving
high in the air? I'm ashamed to say I've not only found what I considered inaccuracies,
but I've actually told the authors (friends of mine) what I found. One laughed
it off because she'd discovered it too late, and the other disagreed with my
finding saying there has to be some leeway in fictional writing.
As my stories started their publishing
journey, my biggest fear was that someone would find a major flaw in my
historical facts. But who is to say what is a true fact? As God's creation, we
are all unique in what we see and process. Two people can witness the same
event and then report it differently based on what they perceived. The New
Testament is a good example of this where we find the same story of Jesus'
birth, repeated several times, yet each is different in details depending on
what the writer either saw, or what he decided was more important to write
about.
This blog reaches people around the world.
As such, we can look at the same item, yet call it by different names. How do
you choose which word to use? The solution is to cater to the intended
readership, right? But what if today's wording is different than what is
historically known? If this sounds confusing, look at this image:
 |
| Potbelly Stove in Railway Station, WDM North Battleford |
I took the photograph of a potbelly stove
in a railway station waiting room at the Western Development Museum in North
Battleford, Saskatchewan. It's the stove type I envisioned for my latest
novella, Love in Store. The stove
would be a fixture in my hero's store and is quite suited to the setting of
1890 Montana.
However, as I worked on the final edit, I
decided to see if it was called a potbelly, pot belly, or pot-bellied stove.
Guess what? I couldn't find reference to any of those terms. Here's what I did
find:
 |
| Sentinel, Large Cannon Stove. Source: 1888-9 Superior Stove Catalogue |
 |
Pug, Globe Heater.
Source: 1890-1 Illustrated Catalogue of Favorite Stoves and Ranges |
Both of the above catalogue descriptions refer to it as a cannon stove and globe heater. My research in journals and
writings of the time commonly refer to it as a globe heater or parlor stove.
Potbelly doesn't appear until the 20th century. And surely I didn't
read everything from that period in history.
So what was I supposed to call the
potbelly-shaped stove in my story? If I described it as a cannon stove or globe
heater, would today's readers know what I meant? Would they skip over it, or
would they stop reading and wonder about it? For the full impact of the story,
I didn't want them to stop reading. But if I called it a potbelly stove, would
I be accused of not staying true to historical facts?
After
agonizing for hours, I left it alone. Perhaps someone will mention it someday
and say I was wrong. Hopefully, I'll smile and think back to when I did the
same to another writer or two. May God give me the grace to ignore what doesn't
matter, so I can enjoy historical fiction for what does.
What do you call such a stove?
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Anita
Mae Draper writes her historical romances under the western skies of the Canadian
prairie where her love of research and genealogy yield fascinating truths that
layer her stories with rich historical details. Her Christian faith is
reflected in her stories of forgiveness and redemption as her characters
struggle to find their way to that place we call home. Anita loves to
correspond with her readers through any of the social media links found at www.anitamaedraper.com.
Readers can enrich their reading experience by checking out
Anita's Pinterest boards for a visual idea of her published stories at www.pinterest.com/anitamaedraper.
