The Healer's Daughter
Page 37
That’s what the Lord had meant. Steal away to a land where there was no fog. Steal away to a state where a man could see into infinity under a sky so blue it hurt their eyes.
Steal away to Nicodemus.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There are so many persons I want to thank. Some contributed to this book directly and some indirectly. Long discussions and my friendship with Angela Bates deepened my understanding of the heart of Nicodemus. She once referred to me as “my white sister with a black soul.” She doesn’t hesitate to straighten me out on issues regarding African Americans.
I was first attracted to Nicodemus through its music. Ernestine VanDuvall, one of the amazing Williams sisters, sent out a flyer advertising a fund-raiser for the church. I went on impulse. The rhythms, the call and response, went straight to my soul. I fell in love with the town. It inspired me to write a number of articles and short stories and even a nonfiction book published by University of Oklahoma Press. I love the energy that galvanizes the community during their annual Homecoming weekend.
I owe a special thank-you to Tiffany Schofield and all the people at Five Star who launched the frontier fiction line. Tiffany regularly attends the Western Writers of America convention and has supported countless writers on the journey to publication. I appreciate the editing contribution of Diane Piron-Gelman and that of my primary proofreader, John Crocket. Graham County historian Lowell Beecher responded immediately to any requests for information.
I’m grateful to the staff at the Kansas State Historical Society, local historians, friends in Nicodemus, and countless persons who responded to my requests for information about African Americans in Kansas. Five Star’s organizational system is outstanding. I appreciate the time and effort involved in bringing A Healer’s Daughter to publication.
As with all my books, I thank my agent, Phyllis Westberg, for her support of my ricocheting from one genre to another.
AUTHOR’S NOTES
The Healer’s Daughter is fiction. Nevertheless, most of the elements of this book are based on facts. The town of Nicodemus is real. It was the first all-black town established on the High Plains. It exists today, and the site is now a national park. There is an exhibition focusing on the town in the new African American museum in Washington.
It would be impossible to exaggerate the courage it took to establish this extraordinary community. Three talented men shaped Nicodemus at the very beginning: Abram Thompson Hall, Jr., Edward Preston McCabe, and John Wayne Niles. Their deeds inspired some of the characters in the book.
Jed Talbot is a fictional character, but his multi-year task of gathering information and testimonies from African Americans in the South parallels the horrendous undertaking of Henry Adams and others on a committee of freed slaves who spent several years searching for an area where they could live in peace. Many of the families wanted to stay in the South. But Adams regretfully decided they would have to go, for they were slipping into a new and worse kind of slavery. In Kansas they could obtain land.
Elam Bartholomew actually existed. After his death, his original herbarium of about 40,000 specimens was acquired by Harvard University.
Queen Bess and Bethany are fictional, but many African American women were adept physicians who could draw from the best of white practices and add techniques from ancient knowledge. The work involved with feeding, clothing, and keeping a plantation functioning was mind boggling. Occasionally, when the white mistress was not up to the task, an intelligent, well-organized black woman took over her job.
So many African Americans fled the South in 1879 that Congress formed a committee to explore the reasons for the exodus. After the investigation, Senate Committee 693 of the 46th Congress issued a 1,400-page report. Due to the breadth of occupations and viewpoints of those interviewed—black and white—it is one of the most remarkable documents in American history.
Words cannot express my admiration for Kansas Governor John Pierce St. John. He was a giant among men who was a century ahead of his time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charlotte Hinger is a multi–award winning novelist and Kansas historian. Her historical novel, Come Spring, published by Simon and Schuster, won the Medicine Pipe Bearers award from Western Writers of America and was a Spur finalist.
Kirkus Reviews selected Hidden Heritage, the third mystery in her Lottie Albright series, as one of the best mysteries of 2013, and one of the best fiction books. The first book in the series, Deadly Descent, won the AZ Publisher’s Award for Best Mystery/Suspense. She has published many articles and short stories.
In 2016, University Press of Oklahoma published her nonfiction book Nicodemus: Post-Reconstruction Politics and Racial Justice in Western Kansas. She still calls herself a Kansan although she now lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.
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