Ed Plum taught social studies and English integrated studies for thirty years at Barrington High School.  A Scripps-Howard grant funded Ed’s masters’ thesis, “A History of the Church of God (New Dunkers) 1848-1962.  He authored eight articles from the thesis for The Brethren Encyclopedia, Vols. 1 and 2, Philadelphia, 1983. He’s working on a historical fiction novel.

You were a high school social studies teacher. What historical time period intrigues you most?

The question is somewhat like asking who my favorite child is. I am most intrigued by periods of major cultural, technological, intellectual, and social change because of the varied responses to these changes. I’ve spent a fair amount of time studying the nineteenth century that created the political contours for the world I’ve lived in for 74 years.  Classical Greece and Chinese civilization interest me for the philosophy and literature.

What made you decide to write rather than read, study or teach from books?

 My pedagogy prepared me to write historical fiction.  I collaborated with others in designing social study problems for the classroom.  Students assumed a character’s identity from a specific time, dressed in costume, and attempted to achieve a particular objective, i.e., convince a Medieval town council to adopt sanitary measures to prevent the spread of a plague without revealing one’s modern identity. Writing a historical novel contains a more compelling narrative and has a wider impact than instructional material.

Your story is set during World War II with characters who are conscientious objectors (COs). How did you go about choosing this as a subject for your novel?

My father and one uncle were COs during WWII.  As a child, I remember FBI agents coming to our house to verify with my father a CO applicant’s sincerity. He advised young men who chose to apply for CO status.  In the early fifties another uncle of mine served as an attendant in a mental hospital in Norristown, PA. The American Mental Health Association resulted from CO’s work as attendants in mental institutions.

Because I grew up in the Church of the Brethren, one of the three historic peace churches, I obtained a CO classification during the Vietnam War. My mother kept letters and monthly CO camp newsletters from my father’s and uncle’s service as COs.  Beyond personal reasons, WWII was the first time there was a national law for the exemption of men of conscience because of religious training and belief.

Historical fiction requires a lot of research and detail. How did you filter it all and find the story?

For four years, I researched in newspaper and church archives and read many books about COs during this time. I visited Camp Lyndhurst, VA twice, where my father spent a year, and mapped the camp from foundation stones and concrete remains. All the Civilian Public Service (CPS) camps were former Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps and some later became German POW camps.

I spent about six months trying to understand how a long-held desire within the historic peace churches to have legal right to alternative service was realized.  My understanding of the process didn’t lend itself to drama. Readers in the BWW workshop made that clear to me.

Through my research I learned there were 18,000 men in CPS who made significant contributions in forestry science, medical research, and firefighting as smoke jumpers. They helped in integrating Federal prison dining and reforming deplorable physical prison conditions through hunger strikes.

Your main characters are nuanced from the very beginning. Their non-violence viewpoint is contrary to that of popular culture at the time giving them an underdog status. What do you hope readers will take away from the story?

 I hope readers understand the difference these men made in a non-violent way, that they struggled with ethical issues very much alive in our culture today and in our past. Most shared a belief that war planted seeds for future violence, that the trauma of war lived in the lives of veterans, their wives, and children.  War turns its participants into an agent of organized state violence.

Is there a contemporary or historical group you would equate with the conscientious objectors of WW II.

Because today’s military is a volunteer organization, two of the three organizations that financed Civilian Public Service during WWII, the Brethren Service Committee and Mennonite Central Committee, now focus on humanitarian efforts in response to natural and human-made disasters. The American Friends Service Committee, the third group from WWII, lobbies against the large military budget and military intervention. Code Pink and Win Without War are strong antimilitary groups.  Veteran’s groups from Vietnam through Iraq have coalesced around an end to “forever wars.”

To shape a narrative, you need to know when to enhance the drama around your characters’ struggles. How do you do that?

Historical facts provide a template for the drama, but a character’s choices enhance the conflict.  In my story a conflict is the COs commitment to eschew violence and show compassion in dealing with mental patients.  Another conflict is the COs’ cooperation with the press to expose abuses in the mental institution. The COs commit to document the horror they witness each day.  In that struggle to document, some moments are more dramatic than others; the tensest moments provide the contour of the drama. 

Why did you choose to include a romantic relationship in the story?

Mental asylums in the 1940s reeked of misery, depravation, and violence.  Humor and romance lighten the darkness. I’m not a humorist so a love story added dramatic counterpoint.  Men of the Civilian Public Service lived in gender segregated units, but they continued existing relationships, dated local girls, and struggled to maintain marriages on two dollars and fifty cents a month. 

What is it about fiction writing that appeals to you rather than a nonfiction account?

Superb nonfiction uses the techniques of fiction, but nonfiction must have building blocks. I had no surviving participants to interview, no diaries, no memoirs, and few detailed reports.  I did have enough material for a fictional account.  Fiction writing opens the world through the characters’ perception of themselves and their world. Most readers find characters and their sensory worlds, their choices, and struggles readily accessible.

What grade would you give yourself for historical accuracy and creative writing?

Once I found my subject within the vast story of COs in the US during WWII, I would give myself high marks for historical accuracy.  Societies require motivating myths about themselves, which are an essential fiction.  The historical fiction writer may tell a different tale that is at odds with the mythical story of the past. It’s important to inform a historical fiction reader where the novel departs from the historical record. Destroying horrible mental institutions did not mean improved mental treatment for the public.  This year, Illinois became only the third state to mandate insurance companies cover mental health issues as determined by a licensed psychiatrist or psychologist.

Historical fiction cleaved from history becomes fantasy; however, to tell a compelling tale a writer must creatively craft the history.  I cannot assign a grade to my efforts. It is the reader who offers the assessment that matters.  I feel I’ve created characters whose consciousness and attitudes fit what I know of the history and the men who served in CPS.

BWW earns high marks for my growth as a writer. The weekly meetings have afforded a generous, unstinting listening to my texts. Member recommendations helped me shape my subject.  Suggestions were made that resulted in revisions, additions, and deletions.  Every regular attendee significantly enriched my novel.