How true does fiction have to be?

I’m reading an interesting book right now—or let’s say the concept behind the book is interesting. I really haven’t gotten far enough into it to be sure about the novel. Titled Mary Coin, it braids a story from the early twentieth century with a contemporary one. The contemporary story seems to be pure fiction, but the historical segment is based on the life of the woman in Dorothea Lange’s iconic Depression photo that she called “Migrant Mother.” A woman, obviously aged beyond her years with work and weather and children, sits on the back of an ancient, broken-down car, surrounded by children with an infant in her lap.

Lange took the photo in 1938 but the woman’s identity was not known until the 1970s. Lange was known for careful record-keeping, but the day she took this she was in a hurry and just happened on the scene accident. The woman was Florence Thompson, although through several marriages she had several last names. Probably at least part Native American, she was a migrant worker, moving from Oklahoma to California. Along the way she had numerous children and several husbands and ended her days living in a mobile park in California, although her children had bought a house for her. None of that, however, relates to my short story or, as far as I can tell, to the novel I’m reading.

Way back when I was inspired by that iconic photo to write a short story titled, “Sue Ellen Learns to Dance.” I was sort of proud of it and gratified when it won a Saddleman (Western Heritage) Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. The award is in the form of a bronze statue depicting a man on horseback. When the emcee handed me the statue, on a glittery awards night, he (It may have been one of President Gerald Ford’s sons—he was there one night), he said, “It’s heavy.” And it was, but it’s one of my prize possessions. I went on to use the story as the lead in my only collection of short stories, Sue Ellen Learns to Dance and Other Stories.

I have not gotten far into the novel, but I can tell that author Marisa Silver sees a far different woman in the photo than I did. Still I am intrigued by the concept of using a piece of art as the springboard for fiction. And the braiding of past and present reminds me of one of my favorite novels, Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner. Stegner took the journals of artist Mary Halleck Foote as the basis for the novel. Foote left her New York career for the rough life of a miner’s wife in the camps of California. Stegner was roundly criticized for having taken liberties with the facts of Foote’s life and journals, introducing a love affair and the death of a child. But Stegner’s book too braids past and present. And it raises the question of how much leeway novelists—or short story writers—can take with the facts of history.

Some are more devoted to historical accuracy than others—and I admit I have not always been a devotee. In historical novels, if there was a gap, I wove in what I imagined might have happened. And in the first short story I ever wrote, I took extreme liberties with the truth. The story, “That Damn Cowboy!” was inspired by artist and sculptor Rufus Zogbaum, a neighbor and, in his mind, rival of Frederick Remington in upstate New York. When Zogbaum’s son rushed in to report that Mr. Remington had sculpted a perfect bucking cowboy, Zogbaum was, so the story goes, furious. But I turned it into a short story set in the West and told by an old woman, the artist’s son, who has cared for him all these years and nursed his fantasies. For a brief period, I was probably the world’s reigning authority on Zogbaum, except maybe for his grandson who I once met, just because no one else knew anything about him.

So tonight I’m left with a couple of thoughts. One is that I should blatantly advertise my short story collection more, so if you want to check it out, you can do so at Sue Ellen Learns to Dance and Other Stories - Kindle edition by Alter, Judy. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. It’s only ninety-nine cents if you read ebooks. But my other thought is that I should revisit my Zogbaum files and maybe do something with them.

Meantime I will forge ahead on Mary Coin.