My novel
July 14, 2008
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I grew up in Southern Illinois, in what’s still called “Bloody Williamson” County, once the most radical community in the nation. The “blood” refers to an event in 1922 called “The Herrin Massacre,” in which seemingly average American men, women, and even children tortured and murdered nonunion workers from Chicago. The backlash from the riot caused such an outcry in the press that President Harding considered sending General Blackjack Pershing to take care of this “black spot” in the heart of America.
My maternal grandfather, William J. Sneed, was the model for A Democracy of Ghosts’ protagonist Bill Sneed, an auto-didact and incomplete genius who rises from child miner to state senator and United Mine Worker district president. Sneed is, arguably, in charge on the day of the massacre.
Because the real Sneed loomed so large in family legend as a man of great conviction, honor, and concern for his constituency, I’ve worked hard to understand how he could have been complicit in those events of 1922. I drew from eyewitness accounts, contemporary media coverage, an ethnography of the area, histories, and my own grandfather’s letters to create the lives of four fictional couples whose ambitions, self-doubts, and social and sexual jealousies contribute to the great violence that reverberates in the region for decades.
The novel is forthcoming from Wordcraft of Oregon, a terrific literary press, and I couldn’t be happier.