“It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we should grow too fond of it.” ~ Gen. Lee at the Battle of Fredericksburg

It’s been happening a lot lately. At first, very close to home and then further away. I’ve found parallels to modern dilemmas in my own writing and promoted those themes in my books in every way imaginable from cultural norms to political fetishes. Perhaps that’s not so astounding as I tend to write historical fiction. But I’ve certainly recognized that penchant for highlighting the parallels between our times now and ‘those times then’ in many more literary works lately. I wonder if that’s because we feel so stressed and pushed out of our comfort zones today. We grasp likenesses of situations from earlier times that somehow were survived by our ancestors in hope of feeling the assurance that we, too, can survive.

I’ve noticed this sense of déjà vu particularly strongly in a book I’m reading currently. I do highly recommend it, not as particularly light summer fare but as a poignant reminder of what the United States has struggled through and survived in times that some of our own relatives lived through—namely the buildup to the Civil War with the dissolution of the Union. The book is Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest, and one cannot read it seriously without drawing numerous parallels to our own times, as the author clearly wants us to do. I admit I’ve renamed the book in my own mind, The Demon of Discontent, because I’ve been struck by how the atmosphere of disaffection and restlessness expanded almost before it was recognized into the catastrophe of hatred that became the ether of war. One cannot miss recognizing the polarization of the country at that time so obviously replicated in our country today. Continue Reading