Traveling as Research

There are times when research­ing a book it becomes nec­es­sary to go to the places where your char­ac­ters live and strug­gle. Going to Eng­land and France very much helped me write the first two Crispin books, par­tic­u­lar­ly the sec­ond. Being in San Fran­cis­co, and on the island of Alca­traz, allowed me to write next year’s book, Rot­ten Row. To write The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle, I stood (and sailed) on grand sail­ing ships. Most recent­ly I was in Venice, Italy, which is the set­ting for a work-in-progress.

My most recent book, The End of the World and Beyond, required a trip to Mary­land. I want­ed to see the city of Annapo­lis, whose hills are an aspect of the sto­ry. I also want­ed to vis­it a swamp, swamps being the “beyond,” part of the book.

There was a time when the Unit­ed States had great land mass­es of swamp. Most have been drained, and built over, a process that began in the 18th cen­tu­ry. The Great Dis­mal Swamp Nation­al Wildlife Refuge (great name!) is per­haps the largest, and most famous one remain­ing. It strad­dles the bor­der of Vir­ginia and North Carolina.

Being near Annapo­lis, I vis­it­ed the Great Cypress Swamp, in Calvert Coun­ty, Mary­land. There are any num­ber of books about swamps, with quite won­der­ful pho­tos. But being in the Great Cypress Swamp was a vital expe­ri­ence. I could not have writ­ten that sec­tion of the book with­out hav­ing gone there.

In truth it was a strange place. Beyond all else, the swamp was green. Green ground. Green foliage. Green trees. Green air. It is also wet. That green air is humid. Ran­dom creeks trick­le. Under­foot mud bub­bles. Mud is every­where. “Do not ven­ture off the path,” are the warn­ings. Yes, quicksand.

Cypress trees are—to my eyes—strange, their dan­gling, vis­i­ble roots are like mul­ti­ple fin­gers reach­ing into the mud. The same roots, pok­ing out into the air from the water, look­ing like sta­lag­mites. And there are sounds, too; unseen birds, and sounds of who knows what—I cer­tain­ly didn’t see them, but they (snakes, rac­coons, pan­thers or what­ev­er) were there.

The impor­tant point for me—the novelist—is that in the 18th and 19th cen­turies, swamps were places where slaves escaped to hide so as to become free, as did enslaved felons, and inden­tured ser­vants. There, they estab­lished secret com­mu­ni­ties, a key part of my sto­ry. They are only now being explored and understood.

When I was in the swamp it was easy to see why folks went there: they are all but impen­e­tra­ble. But my young heroes, Bara and Oliv­er, had to get through one to a secret, free com­mu­ni­ty, where lib­er­ty was promised.

My being in that swamp helped me fol­low them. Read the book and you can come along.