Echoes from THEN to NOW #1

I promised to write some of the interesting things I discovered while working on my historical novel, The Beekeeper’s Question. In any project like this, what gets woven into the narrative is only a fraction of what the writer discovers. Discovery was (and remains) an amazing aspect of writing in general, and particularly writing a story like this.

The Beekeeper’s Question takes place in a particular moment of time, five years before I was born. As the characters evolved, they demanded I discover things about the era I didn’t know I was looking for. I had to explore what World War II meant to rural America, and then to explore what life was like in western Montana, among farmers, townsfolk, and Blackfeet.

There is a scene where the two old friends, Leo and Doc, are sitting on the farmhouse porch questioning how fascism could have so thoroughly overtaken Germany. It is summer 1942 and the US has entered the War. Europe is occupied by The Third Reich. Only Great Britain remains free, providing an essential launching point for Allied forces.

From the book, page 101:
…The floorboards creaked under their rocking chairs.
“It’s terrifying, all those swastikas, and people who were like us a few years ago, burning books, throwing rocks, hating Jews.” Doc rested her hand on Leo’s arm. “How could this happen?”
“One charismatic demagogue.” Leo stopped rocking. “Moral codes like The Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, whisper in the human heart. Hitler has hypnotized the German people with promises of greatness in exchange for their souls. Now it takes the horrors of war to break the Nazi spell. Well, specifically, for the Germans to lose and for us to win without losing our souls.”

Here is the difference between 1942 and 2024: If America loses its soul to fascism in this election, there is no other country going to save us from this fever dream. We are, right now, being asked if enough of us will wake, will vote, will pull back from the razor’s edge and question “what in the world are we thinking?”

Langley stairs to the sea. Photo by Kristie MacLean

In her last several Substack columns, Heather Cox Richardson, has made the threats and parallels abundantly clear. Rachel Maddow’s podcast Ultra, and her book of the same title lay out the fascistic threat of the 1930’s/early 1940s in hugely researched detail. No one in this country is voting blindly. The candidates and political parties have made their personalities, intentions, policies, and worldviews extremely clear. We are accountable. We have seen this horrific phenomenon before. We have been raised in the heroics and mythology and costs of World War II. We are an historically informed populace. We know what fascism looks and sounds like and how it tricks the minds of the gullible.

And now, we vote.
Could we have a week of quiet please?
Could the pundits close their laptops, stop streaming/screaming, opinionating, filling airspace with any tidbit of trivia before the next commercial?
Could the pollsters please stop polling?
Let me poll—at the voting booth, at the drop box, among my neighbors who are exercising their rights—including their right to disagree with me.
Give us a breath.
Let us gather ourselves for this moment.
We are determining the nature of the country we live in.

As Senator Raphael Warnock says, “Voting is a form of civil prayer. We are voting for the world we want.”

Vote, America.
Take a breath.

At the end of the book, a young man says to an older rancher who has been fighting with folks in the valley, “There’s a lot going bad in the world right now, neighborliness is the one thing that must not change.”

Whatever happens on November 5th, we will face many opportunities to reweave our communities, families, and friendship groups. No matter what, it is up to the ordinary people to keep goodness going in the world, to maintain the bonds of neighborliness. That must not change.