The Lost Citation

I’m working on a new book, called The Battle of Willow Bend, which will (fingers crossed) be out in the middle of 2015. It’s about a group of black Misissippians, veterans of the Union Army, who found a black town and stand up to the Klan twenty years after the war is over. I like to say that it’s a girl book with a battle in it. There’s definitely some shooting, but there’s more than one love story, too.

My husband, who was in graduate school in history when I was, wrote his dissertation on politics in post-Reconstruction Mississippi. He swears to me that he read about the incident that inspired my story in some obscure Southern newspaper. But, he ruefully says, he’s never been able to find the citation. That’s all right, I tell him. As a novelist, I don’t need a citation. But he would be happier if he could find it. If he does, I’ll let you know.