J. M. Hochstetler

Aren’t you are just thrilled when you have the chance to study history? Can’t wait to crack open that textbook and memorize a whole lot of dates, places, events, people from long, long ago? Know what? Me too!

After all, history is just so dry, so dull . . . so . . . well, boring! How are you supposed to relate to a bunch of strangers who lived a long time ago in a place and time very unlike our own? What does the stuff that happened way back then have to do with me today?

Have you ever heard the old adage: “Those who refuse to learn from history will be condemned to repeat it?” We all know there's a lot of truth in that, don’t we? We’ve experienced it in our personal lives, and we often see it in the policies of our own government and others on the world stage. 

The fact is that the past can teach us a lot about our present lives and enable us to make wise decisions for our future. But history tests taken as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (Nation’s Report Card), continue to show that our children aren’t learning some of the basics about our nation’s past. Historians, educators, and even lawmakers are concerned that our citizens are progressively losing touch with the great ideals and principles on which our country was founded and what the consequences will be for our future. 

According to David McCullough, the author of many popular histories including 1776, “Textbooks for the most part are very dreary. Others are dismal almost beyond describing. It’s as if they are being written to kill any interest a student might have.” Sadly that’s my recollection of the history textbooks I studied in school, and I suspect it’s yours too.

In researching the American colonial and Revolutionary eras I've learned that our Founders believed that teaching the truths of history will develop responsible citizens and ensure that our nation doesn’t fall prey to the mistakes of the past. What happened before we were born has everything to do with who we are and the life we're living today.

To pass the essential knowledge of the past on to people of today, the study of history needs to be fun and exciting! One of the best tools for getting students of every age involved and excited about history is entertaining, well-written, accurate historical fiction. Everyone loves a story. Stories awaken our imaginative sense and draw us into the lives of the characters—their emotions, values, motivations, hopes, and dreams. When we listen to or read a story, we unconsciously lower our defenses and open our hearts to underlying universal themes of love and hate, fear, hope, faith, and more. Well-written, carefully researched historical fiction allows the reader to identify intimately with the story’s characters, to enter a world that is outwardly very different from their own but in reality has many important points of contact, and to get history on deep level so they can apply the lessons of the past to their own lives. 

History matters, and that's a fact I delight in communicating with readers.  The main focus of my writing for some years now has been the American Revolution. Writing the only comprehensive historical fiction series about our Revolution is an admittedly large task, but the amazing wealth of primary resources on the Revolution makes the work fascinating. My goal is to retell the true story of our nation’s founding by recreating the actual historical period and placing my fictional characters in the middle of the real British and colonial leaders, the pivotal battles, and the political, cultural, and social upheaval of the time to create a suspense-filled story of adventure, intrigue, and romance that’s both entertaining and as accurate as I can make it. Many of the minor characters in the series are real people of the day or are based on people mentioned in the historical records. I’ve even taken bits of dialog from contemporary accounts. Many readers tell me that they have a hard time telling which parts are fictional and which parts are fact, and that’s really gratifying to hear.

I am motivated by the belief that God calls us to remember all the ways he has blessed us in the past. When we look back through excellent, accurate historical fiction and nonfiction resources, we can see his hand of guidance through trials and gather hope, confidence, trust, and faith that God will continue to guide and bless us. History teaches us that we are part of the stream of life, part of the legacy of faith that runs through our own families and our nation from the beginning, part of something bigger than ourselves. This assurance enriches our lives and gives them meaning and purpose. It equips us to be responsible citizens, parents, teachers, and disciples.

Historical fiction is not only a very effective tool for teaching history, but also can tell about God in a way that reaches readers’ hearts more deeply than a simple recounting of facts. After all, that’s why Jesus taught the people through parables—because he knows our minds and hearts. He created us. By using God’s own method of reaching his people, we get it too—and we have fun doing it. That’s the reason why I write historical fiction! 

“A reverance for our Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end.” ~A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, by the representatives of the united colonies of North America meeting in Congress at Philadelphia, July 6, 1775

“When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand, we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the Sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.” ~ —Churchill to the House of Commons, May 1936, The Last Lion: William Spencer Churchill, Alone 1932-1940 by William Manchester, p. 140

“And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip—the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year—unless—by a supreme recovery of our moral health and martial vigour, we rise again and take our stand for freedom, as in the olden time.” ~Churchill to the House of Commons, October 1938, The Last Lion, p. 371

“If mortal catastrophe should overtake the British Nation and the British Empire, historians a thousand years hence will still be baffled by the mystery of our affairs. They will never understand how it was that a victorious nation, with everything in hand, suffered themselves to be brought low, and to cast away all that they had gained by measureless sacrifice and absolute victory—gone with the wind! . . . Now is the time to rouse the nation . . . We should lay aside every hindrance and endeavour by uniting the whole force and spirit of our people to raise again a great British nation standing up before all the world; for such a nation, rising in its ancient vigour, can even at this hour save civilisation.” ~Churchill to the House of Commons, March 1939, The Last Lion, p. 299

“[Churchill’s] cry of alarm . . . warned that without concerted action by the nations now lying under the shadow of the swastika, ‘such civilization as we have been able to achieve’ would be reduced by renewed warfare to ‘pulp and squalor.’ The peoples of Europe, ‘chattering, busy, sporting, toiling, amused from day to day by headlines and from night to night by cinemas,’ were nevertheless ‘slipping, sinking, rolling backward to the age when ‘the earth was void and darkness moved upon the face of the waters.’ ‘Surely,’ he argued, ‘it is worth a supreme effort—the laying aside of every impediment, the clear-eyed facing of fundamental facts, the noble acceptance of risks inseparable from heroic endeavor—to control the hideous drift of events and arrest calamity on the threshold. Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! NOW is the appointed time.’ ” ~The Last Lion, p. 205.

“We will go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choice that moves events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as he wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul.” ~George W. Bush, 2005 Inauguration 

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