Historical Fiction versus REAL Fiction, a guest post by H.M. Bouwman

Once upon a time, I went on a date with a man who had, as part of his preparation for our meeting, studied reviews of my recent historical fantasy novel. His attention felt incredibly flattering—until halfway through dinner, when he asked me if I was ever going to write a real book. Um, what? I said. Well, he said, there are only two kinds of novels: historical ones and real ones. Oh? I said, putting down my fork. Tell me more about this.
I was … let’s say I was intrigued. The man explained that historical fiction could only tell what really happened, which made it derivative and unimaginative. Other fiction, meanwhile, was real literature: creative, interesting. And I should write real literature. If I could.
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(Let’s set aside, for the moment, that the book in question was historical fantasy and contained, you know, sea monsters and portals and other implausibilities.)
And let’s take the idea seriously, for just a moment, that historical fiction can “only” tell what really happened. Because years after that very intriguing date, I’ve written an actual historical novel, Scattergood—with no fantasy elements, no departures from plausibility. Totally true. Right?
I mean, I made a bunch of stuff up. To be clear.
I’ve been thinking for a while about the question of how stories relate to truth. Fantasy can tell the truth, after all: truth in metaphor, truth in myth, truth in character, emotional truth. There are so many kinds of truth-telling, not all of it bound to what really happened.
However, Scattergood is set in a real time and place—West Branch, Iowa, in 1941—and it concerns real events—the US about to enter WWII. More than that, its story centers on historical realities: a child in the novel has leukemia, for example, which in 1941 is a death sentence, not something I can magic away; a Quaker boy hopes to avoid the draft when he comes of age, which will in this world mean alternate service or a prison sentence; refugees have arrived from Europe to Scattergood hostel just outside of West Branch, as they did in real life. The book, in other words, involved a lot of research and a lot of commitment to historical truth-telling.
But it also involved imaginatively inhabiting the mind and heart of a narrator who never actually lived: 12-almost-13-year-old Peggy, who wants to save her cousin from illness, who wants to make a boy fall in love with her, who wants her parents to get along, who wants to understand what makes people tick, who wants to live a big life and make a difference in the world—and who makes awful, terrible mistakes.

The research that goes into a historical novel, while necessary, isn’t sufficient to make the story come to life. The life-giving spark is what the author brings to the book, imagining characters and inventing stories about them. And the author adds in their own life experiences as well. As much as this novel is historical, it is also deeply personal: like Peggy, I was a year younger than my classmates and often felt like I didn’t fit in; school was easy but social interactions were often hard. Like Peggy, I excelled at math (though, to be fair, not as much as Peggy does), and like her I tutored a classmate who was popular and pretty (and also, kind) and not interested in learning math.
Peggy’s farm is my grandparents’ small dairy farm in Michigan, transposed to Iowa, including cows named after dead relatives, the hummingbird tree and the pump, the broody chickens, and so much more. And the hayloft!
And the cousins. I grew up with three sisters and thirteen Bouwman cousins. I still have three sisters, but for many years now, I’ve had only twelve living cousins. Scattergood is also about this loss and grief.

We cousins all grew up together. Every holiday and many Saturdays were spent at the farm—and when you went to the farm, chances were, at least some of your cousins would be there, too. We played in the gully, avoiding the bee hives and daring each other to touch the electric fence that kept the cows out of the woods. We fell into the stream and climbed trees and pretended we were in Narnia, and once, we all got into the poison ivy patch and Grandpa sprayed us off with a hose attached to the pump. My grandma taught me to make bread. My grandpa played the same slight-of-hand tricks on us over and over again, and we let him because we loved him. These are the people who raised my father, perhaps the kindest person I’ve ever met, the man who told me that he was always proud of me, always.
I and two of my cousins were born the same summer, and we grew up together, each of us intensely nerdy in our own way. After college, T got married and moved away to D.C.; I went to grad school in central Illinois; and B moved to Kansas City for a job. She fell in love and got engaged while I was reading books and writing papers; I missed her bridal shower because I didn’t have a car or a free weekend. Later that spring, when she stopped after work to buy lace for her wedding, she was robbed, shot, and murdered in the parking lot of the Walmart.
B had a wild, unlikely laugh, almost a crow’s caw, and she tipped her head back for it, laughing upwards.
Her death has been one of the defining moments of our life together as a larger Bouwman family. One of my aunts calls it our family’s 9/11 moment—she says every family has one, and some have more than one.

Peggy’s cousin in Scattergood is sick with a fatal disease. She is fourteen, not twenty-two, and she isn’t murdered, and she doesn’t laugh by tipping her head back, and her personality isn’t at all like B’s. She’s not my cousin, not in any “this really happened” kind of way. But she is, for me, a way to think about what happened. To think about what that loss has meant.
And I’m not Peggy, even though there are some similarities in personality. We don’t have the same lives or make the same choices or even share all the same beliefs. But there’s truth, I hope, in the big feelings she has. As Hawthorne explained: the truth of the human heart. That’s what a novel is trying to recreate. In fantasy and in realism, what I’m reaching for is truth that goes beyond simply telling what really happened–though to be clear, in historical fiction, what really happened is both the backdrop and the electric fence around the story, buzzing your hand if you push against it. The bigger concern, always, is what happens in the field inside that fence. The truth of the human heart, always.
(Here’s an epilogue, in case you are wondering: Were there more dates after that dinner where I learned I didn’t write real books? Uh, no. But do I love telling the date story, which concludes with the man telling me I should cut my hair into a more flattering style and sending me links to haircuts that I need to consider? Yes, I do love telling that story. Even as it was happening, I knew it was a story I wanted to remember.)
Meet the author

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H.M. Bouwman (aka Heather; she/her) is the author of fantasy and historical fantasy, including A Crack in the Sea and Gossamer Summer. Her new book, Scattergood, is her foray into historical fiction. She is a Professor at the University of St Thomas, where she teaches literature and creative writing. She lives in St. Paul, MN with her delightful offspring and their terrible cat. She can be found on Bluesky (hmbouwman) where she very occasionally says things, and on her website, www.hmbouwman.com .
About Scattergood
In rural Iowa in 1941, twelve-year-old Peggy’s quiet life is turned upside down by refugee arrivals, first love, and a heartbreaking diagnosis.
Growing up a farm girl, Peggy’s life has never been particularly exciting. But a lot changes in 1941. Her friend Joe starts acting strange around her. The Quaker hostel nearby reopens to house Jewish refugees from Europe, including a handsome boy named Gunther and a troubled professor of nothing. And her cousin and best friend, Delia, is diagnosed with leukemia—and doesn’t even know it.
Peggy has always been rational. She may not be able to understand poetry and speak in metaphors like Delia, but she has to believe she can find a way out of this mess, for both of them. There has to be a cure. And yet the more she tries to control, the more powerless she feels. She can’t make Gunther see her the way she sees him. She can’t help the Professor find his missing daughter. She’s tired of feeling young and naive, but growing up is proving even worse.
A historical coming-of-age novel that feels as alive and present as today, Scattergood offers even readers familiar with World War II a fascinating new glimpse of history, far from the battlefields of Europe and the shores of New York City. H.M. Bouwman presents a raw and unapologetic snapshot of a girl battling her own shortcomings and the random nature of life.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
ISBN-13: 9780823457755
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Publication date: 01/21/2025
Age Range: 10 – 12 Years
Filed under: Guest Post

About Amanda MacGregor
Amanda MacGregor works in an elementary library, loves dogs, and can be found on BlueSky at @amandamacgregor.bsky.social.
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