On Crime Reads: Eliot Pattison on Why Historical Fiction Matters

Crime Reads just published this fantastic essay by Edgar Award winner Eliot Pattison on "Why Historical Fiction Matters." Here's an excerpt:

Through the years I had learned much about Ulysses Grant, but he never truly came alive for me until I read Ron Chernow’s description of how Grant liked to toss bread balls at his children during White House dinners. Likewise Benjamin Franklin felt standoffish until I discovered that as a teenager he mischievously wrote essays in the name of the widow Silence DoGood, which proved so popular that several Boston bachelors wrote to propose marriage. These are the subtle, humanizing details that breathe life into our forebears. By using them the skilled novelist can resurrect long dead characters, making them rise up out of the printed page. Historical fiction thus becomes an antidote to our historical apathy.

Read the full essay here.