M. Mark Miller, Author

Category: News and Views

  • News and Views: I’m Eager To Meet Ivan Doig

    I’m looking forward to seeing Ivan Doig tonight at the annual Friends of MSU Libraries dinner. I’ve been a fan of Doig’s since the 1980s when I read his marvelous memoir, This House of Sky. Like Ivan, I grew up in Montana ranch country, so I find much to identify with in his work.  He got the people, times, and the setting I grew up with right.

    I’m sure that Ivan gets other times and settings right.  I was so impressed with his novel, English Creek, that I gave it to my mother.  Mom came of age during the Great Depression in rural Montana, just like the protagonist of English Creek, Jick McCaskill.

    The next time I visited, I asked, “Mom, what did you think of that book I gave you?”

    “It was okay,” she said.

    “But did he get the times right?” I persisted.

    She agreed that he had, but she was still unimpressed.

    “He just wrote about things the way they were,” she said.

    If I get a chance to talk with Ivan tonight, I’ll tell him that story.  I think he’d be amused.  At least, I hope so.

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  • Narrative History or Historical Fiction?

    Most of the time I think I’ll write my next book, Encounters in Yellowstone 1877, as narrative history, but when I hit a dead end in my research, I’m tempted to switch to historical fiction. That happened yesterday when I was trying to find out what the weather was like in Yellowstone Park on August 25, 1877.

    One of the main characters in my book, George Cowan, woke up that morning after lying unconscious under a tree in his blood-soaked clothing. George was suffering from three gunshot wounds so severe that he could barely crawl, let alone walk. He hoped to drag himself on his elbows for five miles that day to a campsite where he might find food.

    I’d like to write something like this: “An ominous gray sky greeted George . . ..” Or maybe: “The bright morning sun cast deep shadows that must have looked like canyons to George . . ..”

    I don’t want to just say: “George awoke the next morning . . ..” But I may have to if I can’t find out what the weather was like. It might be easier to give up narrative history and convert to historical fiction. Then I wouldn’t have to ground every detail in the facts; I could just make stuff up.

    That may sound like a no-brainer: don’t bother with the hard research; go with historical fiction, but it’s not that easy. When you tell your readers you’re writing fiction, you promise to provide compelling stories, fully formed characters, and gripping details that will bring your story to life. That can be as hard—maybe even harder—than sticking to the facts.

    I’ve got myself persuaded. I’m sticking with narrative history—at least for now. I know it’s possible to write true stories that have all the compelling virtues of fiction. Laura Hillenbrand did it with Seabiscuit; Erik Larson with Devil in the White City; Timothy Egan, The Big Burn; David Laskin, The Children’s Blizzard—and there are many more examples.

    If they can do it, maybe I can do it.

    What do you think?

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    — To see related posts, click on “Narrative History” under the Categories Button on the right side of this page.

    — Read more about History versus Fiction.

     

  • News: My Upcoming Events

    November 17, Helena: I’ll be hosting a table for “Great Conversations,” a fundraiser sponsored by the Helena Education Foundation.  My job will be to lead a dinner conversation (scintillating, I hope) with seven people who want to talk about early travel to Yellowstone Park.  I’ll get a free dinner, an opportunity to talk about a topic I love, and the satisfaction of contributing to Helena schools.

    February 17, Bozeman: I’ll be making a presentation for the Fine Arts Series of the Montana State University College of Art and Architecture. My title will be “Bozeman to Wonderland: Early Trips to Yellowstone Park.”  In addition to talking about the explorers who first documented Yellowstone’s wonders, I’ll tell about Bozeman women who arranged for cavalry to escort them to the park through Indian country and rode sidesaddle through the wilderness.

    Meanwhile,  Ivan Doig says on his website, writer at work.

  • Outline Complete for Encounters in Yellowstone 1877

    I have completed a major milestone for my next book, Encounters in Yellowstone 1877. I finished an outline. That was a complicated task because I’m writing about a myriad of overlapping events and disparate (often desperate) people.

    First, there are the Nez Perce, who decide to flee their homeland in Idaho and Washington State and make a new life in the buffalo country of Montana. After the army’s predawn attack on their sleeping camp on the banks of the Big Hole River, the Indians fragment. The Chiefs try to avoid whites while leading the main group, but they lose control over small bands of young men who spread out to seek revenge. These young warriors attack settlers along the Montana-Idaho border and tourists in Yellowstone National Park.

    Like a nuclear chain reaction, each attack breaks up a group of people yielding several dramatic stories. For example, when a young warrior named Yellow Wolf and his companions attack a tourist party near the lower geyser basin, they capture a young woman, shoot her husband in the head and leave him for dead, and send several other tourists fleeing into the forrest. This one event yields Emma Cowan’s chilling tales of her captivity and quest for help after being released in the wilderness; George Cowan’s story of regaining consciousness to find himself wounded and alone, and the Cowan’s companions’ efforts to hide, flee and find help. Meanwhile, army units converge on Yellowstone Park from several directions, trying to find and subdue the elusive Nez Perce.

    I’ve organized these events into 20 chapters that chronicle events beginning in 1805 when the Nez Perce befriend several starving men from the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and ending 130 years later with publication of a book entitled Adventures in Geyserland. Doubtless I’ll make changes as my research proceeds. I’ll need to merge some chapters, split others and rearrange things. But I have an outline that organizes a complicated human drama into a coherent narrative. For now, I’m happy with that.

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  • An Event: Meeting Fans and Enticing Readers

    I can’t say I was mobbed by fans at my book signing at Old Faithful Inn, but I did meet enough of them to confirm that the species exists.  My favorite was a young man (about 15, I suppose) who asked, “Did you write this book?  Can I get a picture with you?”

    Waiting for readers in front of the sign predicting the next time Old Faithful will play.

    Second place goes to a guy a little older who said, “I started your book on the way up; it’s great. If I go and get it from my car, will you sign it.”

    “Sure, I’ll be here all day,” I replied. The lobby emptied for the next eruption and I made my way up to the observation deck to watch Old Faithful play. When I returned, he was waiting at my table with a beat up copy of Adventures in Yellowstone.  I signed it with a flourish. When I handed it back, he smiled and shoved it into his backpack.

    “What’s the book about?” was the most common question I got (aside from “When does the geyser go off?”)  The best answer seemed to be: “It’s a dozen first-person accounts of travel to Yellowstone Park in the Nineteenth Century.” Then I’d add: “real adventure stories—encounters with Indians, falling in geysers, watching bears fight.”  If I held people’s attention for all that, I usually made a sale.

    A lot of people asked: “Where did you get the stories?”

    “Lot’s of places,” I’d say, “libraries, archives, magazines, books, the Internet; I have more that 300 of them and these are the twelve very best.” Sometimes that cinched a sale; sometimes people said they’d think about it, and, sometimes, they’d just walk away.

    A couple of parents asked if they’re were stories they could read to their children. For adventure I suggested Ernest Thompson Seton’s tale about watching a momma black bear fight a grizzly, and for humor, The Earl of Dunraven’s hilarious description of how to pack a mule.

    Some people didn’t need any arm twisting.  One boy flipped open the table of contents and announced loudly: “It’s got Truman Everts’ story [about being lost alone in the park for 37 days]; I gotta have this book.”

    A little later, a girl methodically sampled the book reading sections here and there.  Then she put it back on the table and marched away.  A few minutes later, she returned with her father in tow. “I never turned my daughter down when she wanted to buy a book,” I said.  “Me neither,” he replied with a smile.

    This girl was among the several people—mostly youngsters and teachers—that I handed my business card and asked to email me their reactions to my book.  I hope I hear from them.

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  • An Event: Meeting Other Authors at Old Faithful Inn

     

    Marsha Karle lavished praise on my book minutes before the next eruption of Old Faithful.

    Part of the fun of singing books in the lobby of the Old Faithful Inn was meeting other authors.  On Saturday morning, my friends artist/illustrator Marsha Karle and her husband, author Paul Schullery, stopped to chat. They were kind enough to hang around the lobby for a few minutes announcing loudly how much they enjoyed Adventures in Yellowstone and saying everyone should read it.  I can’t wait to get my hands on their new book, This High Wild Country: A Celebration of Waterton- Glacier International Peace Park. The combination of Marsha’ s watercolors and Paul’s prose has to make for a wonderful book.

     

    Too bad Paul wasn’t around a few minutes later when another author of books on fishing arrived. I’m sure he would have enjoyed meeting Harry Sloan, the author of Virginia Trout Streams: A Guide to Fishing the Blue Ridge Watershed.

    In the afternoon, I got to meet Ralph Himmelsbach, author of  Norjak, The Investigation of D.B. Cooper.  Ralph was the lead FBI investigator in the case, one of the most fascinating unsolved crimes of the last century. In case you don’t remember, a man calling himself Dan Cooper highjacked a passenger plane, ransomed it for $200,000, and parachuted away.

    I’ll post more later on the thrill of hearing people say “I loved your book,” and the fun of convincing others that  they’d enjoy it.

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  • An Event: Off to a Family Reunion

    On Saturday, I’m going to the Page-Redfield family reunion in Twin Bridges. I was invited to the event by—let’s see—my second cousin once removed. Something like that; I never did get the hang of calculating kinship. I don’t expect to see any relatives much closer than a third cousin. Sometime a couple of generations back branches of the family drifted apart and I’m pretty sure my brothers, cousins, nieces, nephews, etc, won’t be there. But, there could be dozens of shirttail relatives. My family has had nearly a hundred and fifty years of being fruitful and multiplying in Montana.

    The first of my relatives to arrive in Montana Territory was an 11-year-old girl named Mary Christianson. In her application for membership in the Montana Historical Society, Mary said she arrived in Montana in 1864 by the Bridger Cutoff. I imagine Mary walking beside a covered wagon in a train led by the famous mountain man Jim Bridger. Bridger’s wagon train emerged from the canyon that bears his name early in July 1864. From the mouth of the canyon, Mary could have looked past the point where three rivers run together to form the Missouri to the Tobacco Root Mountains 70 miles to the west. Mary’s odyssey from her birthplace in Germany, across the Atlantic and then across America was almost over. Mary would spend the rest of her life west of the Tobacco Roots.

    While Mary contemplated her new life in gold-rush Montana, her future husband, James Madison Page, languished in the notorious Civil War prison at Andersonville where union soldiers died by the thousands of starvation and disease. (Andersonville Prison has been burned into the American consciousness as a symbol of inhumanity, but Page said he never saw  any intentional cruelty there. In fact, in 1908 Page published a book that said the charges against Major Henry Wirtz, who was hanged for murders he allegedly committed at Andersonville, were trumped up.)

    Jim Page was released from Andersonville in a prisoner exchange and returned home to Michigan. After recovering from his ordeal and attending business college, Jim decided to move to Montana in 1866. Family lore says he wanted to rejoin the army so he could fight under his hero, General George Armstrong Custer, but his mother talked him out of it.

    Jim got a job as a teamster on one of the wagon trains hauling supplies to the gold fields. When he arrived in Montana, he tried his hand at prospecting, but, like many gold rushers, he soon turned to other ventures. He established his Excelsior Ranch near Twin Bridges and began enticing his siblings to join him. His brother, Robert Wallace Page, came to Montana with his family by steamboat up the Missouri in 1879. Low water stopped the boat at Cow Island, but the family had planned to come overland the remaining distance anyway. A sister, Elmira Utley, came with her family a year later on an “immigrant train” operated by the Utah and Northern Railroad. The track ended at Lima, Montana, then, so the Utleys had to continue by horse and wagon from there to Twin Bridges.

    My Great Great Grandfather Rodney Page and his widowed sister, Elvira Stephens, were the last to arrive, coming in 1882. By then the track reached as far as Dillon. Actually, Grandpa Rodney went ahead leaving  his wife and sister to manage the move while he rushed ahead to join his brother, Jim, on a surveying expedition to Yellowstone Park. That was the beginning of the Page brothers land survey company, which operated for nearly 40 years. Jim Page said the company surveyed in every county in Montana (probably meaning the original territorial counties).

    Descendants of the Pages still tell stories about the 1882 Yellowstone trip. Rodney hired two young assistants named Fred Mercer and Harry Redfield. Mercer and Redfield become close friends and loved playing practical jokes on each other. They used to steal each other’s red flannel underwear and toss it into Old Faithful tinting the next eruption pink—so the story goes. With nearly 4,000 gallons in the typical eruption of Old Faithful, it’s doubtful that one pair of flannels would dye it, but perhaps the prank involved a smaller geyser.

    Rodney must have liked Mercer and Redfield well enough. When the survey was done, they followed him home and married his daughters. Harry Redfield married Elvira Page and they had eleven children, so their descendants doubtless will dominate the family reunion. Fred Mercer married Eva Page and they had four children. I descend from the Mercer line.

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  • A Note: Serendipity and Research

    While working at the Pioneer Museum today, I noticed the 1877-78 volume of the Bozeman Avant Courier was lying on a table. I had planned to examine it for articles about the flight of the Nez Perce through Yellowstone Park for my next book, Encounters in Yellowstone, but hadn’t bothered to haul it out of the basement. Since it was just sitting there, I decided I’d go through it. I’m glad I did.

    The first thing I found was a story about the adventures of Ben Stone, a member of one of the tourist groups that the Nez Perce attacked. On the same page were two other stories: one reporting that one of Stone’s companions had been killed, and one reporting that a man from another group of tourists who had been reported dead was found alive. These stories, published within days of the incidents they reported, were vivid and had an immediacy that historical accounts often lack.

    I found stories in four subsequent issues, but then discovered several issues were missing—including the one that would have reported Chief Joseph’s surrender after the Battle of the Bear Paws. I suspect it was stolen. Of course, that thought made me angry, but finding gripping reports took out  some of the sting. I know I’ll be able to find the missing articles at other archives.

    Knowing that there are exciting articles available motivates me to examine other newspapers such as the Helena Independent, the Missoulian and the Montana Post. Finding the stories will be hard work, but it will make Encounters a better book.

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  • My blog is a work in progress.

    I began working on my blog today and got further with it than I expected. Trial and error is a tough way to learn, but I’m getting the hang of WordPress. I should have an attractive blog soon. I’ll use it to let folks know about my life as writer and public speaker. Look for information about book signings and readings, presentations for Humanities Montana and progress reports on my various writing projects. Also, I’ll post stories from my collection of first-person accounts of travel to Yellowstone Park more than a hundred years ago. I’d love to hear your comments and suggestions.

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