A Small Town’s Civil Rights Struggle
In Murfreesboro, TN, in 1971, a peaceful walkout and sitin produced results
It was fifty-five years ago, yet the issues that drove students to protest persist. I witnessed the sit-in, and it left a strong impression. When I began writing my latest literary-historical novel, I had no idea where it might take me or what it would entail to depict the protest in my story. I let my characters take over. By the end, I’m as surprised as the reader.
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While I’m retired now and writing fiction full-time, I draw on the skills I developed as the Director of News and Public Affairs at WMOT-FM from 1980 to 2010. I also worked at other news stations and in national and international media until 2019. The connections between writing fiction and news are deeper than you might think. In both cases, it’s important to establish the who, what, when, where, and how of the story. In the real world, real people say and do things that can be reported on, while in fiction, characters say and do things in service of the story.
My new novel, Ribbon of Dreams (https://tinyurl.com/4cy8vdfk), will be published by Histria Fiction on March 10, 2026. Readers say the main character’s struggle is both heartbreaking and hopeful.
I moved the student’s protest to 1975 so I could depict the end of the Vietnam War and explore another issue that continues to plague veterans, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I had a cousin who returned from the war severely mentally injured and later took his own life. Again, a real event that found its way into my story.
My novels are entirely fictional, but some events are drawn from my memory and from locations in Murfreesboro. My first two novels share similar connections. Gettysburg by Morning, https://tinyurl.com/288p272h, set during the Civil War, ends at the Stones River Battlefield, which is preserved by the federal government. My second novel, The Farm, https://tinyurl.com/4kd3bdrp, features characters based on my grandmother, her brother-in-law, my mother, and her sisters, who grew up on a farm in Rutherford County. I learned that POW camps from World War II were near the farm and wondered what might happen if one of the Nazis escaped with ill intent and affected the lives of the women and men who lived there.
Now is a time when people are concerned about how history is taught in schools and displayed in our public squares. It’s important to preserve these events in both nonfiction and fictional documents. As novelist Stephen King says, “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” After a career of telling the truth about the world, I’m finding that, later in life, creating fictional characters and events based on real events and memories can transport the reader back in time.
