Children’s Crusades and the Impact of Historical Fiction
My enchantment with historical fiction goes way back. The first real chapter book I remember reading was called A Boy of the Lost Crusade by Agnes Danforth Hewes. It was a long book, very long for a second grader–279 pages. It had a reddish brown hard-cover and a picture of a boy in a ragged tunic with a red crusader’s cross on it. Inside were just words, no pictures. In fact, my teacher told me it was too hard for me, which made me want to read it all the more. And read it I did, starting a lifelong interest in the genre.
There is a lot I don’t remember about the book. The main character’s name is gone. The details of where in France (or was it Germany?) he started, exactly when the crusade occurred, and how the story ended have all slipped my mind in the 50+ plus years since I first read it. Actually, I even mis-remembered the title, thinking for years it was called Children of the Lost Crusade. (Perhaps because in my mind, I always became the main character in the book I was reading, and so I subconsciously remembered it as the story of a girl.)
What is more amazing is how much I do remember from this very first real book. I remember being fascinated with the idea of children going on a crusade, and realizing it had really happened. I remember wondering why it was so important to ‘take back’ the Holy Land. I remember seeing slavery in a new light, understanding for the first time that many different people had been enslaved in many different places. In the parts of plot I do remember, the main character was headed toward the holy land toward a port in Italy with hundreds of children from all over Europe.They were cheated by a ruthless ship captain who sold them into slavery. The leaky ship wrecked somewhere in the Mediterranean, maybe Northern Africa or the shores of Jordan perhaps. At age 7, I had no idea these places even existed before reading this book. Most of all I remember being carried away on that ship, agonizing over the boy’s fate, and feeling totally immersed in another time and place.
I’m not sure I would still like the story. The style of writing from 1923 is slower and less culturally sensitive than styles today. But in second grade, the story fascinated me–so much so that I remember the the book (or at least parts of it) decades later. I began a quest to find out more about the past and the people who lived in it. My first novel (A Mistake of Consequence) explores the idea of forced indenture in the American colonies. A different time period, to be sure, but still another look at how people throughout history have forced others to work for them. I am still intrigued by how people lived and what they thought. I see so many connections between what happened ‘back then’ and what happens now. People of long ago fought over religious issues (some of the same ones) and struggled for power both in their personal lives in the political world. Mothers and fathers worried about caring for their children. Children got into mischief. Everyone needed to find food and shelter and avoid the bad guys, whoever they were. The solutions to the problems of long ago differ from today, but the problems are much the same. Both the solutions and failures of our forebears can help us learn to navigate the complexities of life today.
This all goes to say, historical fiction is valuable. For me, it opened new ways of looking at the world. With historical fiction, I do indeed live in interesting times…a lot of interesting times.
BRIC-A-BRAC 