Another rainy day

Posted by Athena Scalzi

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Is being a hero a selfless act if the hero has nothing they’re sacrificing? Author Bishop O’Connell explores what a hero really looks like in the Big Idea for his newest novel, Stain of a Nation. Come along as he shows you what bravery looks like when someone has everything to lose.

BISHOP O’CONNELL:
Lost Cause Mythology is bullshit idea that the Confederate cause during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery. Spoiler, it was centered on slavery. In Two-Gun Witch, the first book in this series, I wanted to counter that trope. I created a character who actually fought for a just cause and still lost. It served as a rather subtle attack against the myth. In Stain of a Nation, I drew inspiration more from John Brown in how I’d tackle the notion. If the book’s title sounds vaguely familiar, it’s a middle finger to a pro KKK and Lost Cause mythos film from 1915 called Birth of a Nation. That’s about as subtle as this story gets.
I love history for the stories it contains, but also the lessons it can teach. Granted, sometimes those lessons can be hard to learn, especially when dealing with the darker and more shameful periods of our lives. However, if reading your nation’s histories only make you proud, you’re not reading history. You’re reading propaganda. That’s the legacy of Lost Cause mythology; a whitewashing, softening, or (especially recently) a complete erasure, of our nation’s darkest aspects.

Where I grew up, I was taught a fairly honest history of slavery, the civil war, and their aftermath. Even so, what I learned on my own horrified me, both in content and that it hadn’t been in our text books. A lot of people in other parts of the country learned an almost nauseatingly sanitized version of that period. Unfortunately, as more stories are told, America has witnessed a redoubling of efforts to ignore, erase, or explain away our nation’s historical horrors. I didn’t set out to write a book as a direct counter to that, but it seems the timing of the release accomplished anyway.
In Stain of a Nation, a found family (a few of whom worked on the Underground Railroad) learn of a town that decided not to accept the results of the Civil War and the 13th Amendment. They drag the recently freed back into bondage, using dark and terrible magic to do so. The protagonists react as any reasonable person would, they set out to free the enslaved and burn the fucking town to the ground. In the doing, they find examples of how deep human cruelty and depravity can run. I’m sorry to say only the magical aspects of what I’ve written are fictional. The rest actually happened, and more frequently than most, myself included, wanted to know.
Few reading this, especially on this site, will grumble about virtue signaling, or white guilt, or something other such pile of horseshit. Just in case though, rest assured Stain of a Nation isn’t either of those things. Neither is it some self-insert white savior story. I’ll be honest though; it might be a bit of a power fantasy. I do love the idea of those with the power to do something, stepping in and helping those who don’t.

Don’t get me wrong, while I sometimes enjoy the idea of a God mode character curb-stomping slavers and fascists without breaking a sweat, that isn’t a hero. A hero can do something, but also has something to lose, sometimes everything, and does it anyway. History might well abound with such people, but we frequently don’t hear about those who did just as much, but often against more, and with less. In some cases, more socially palatable legends drown the grim histories. More often though, their stories disappear because no one knows. They fought and died in anonymity, their only legacy being the results of their efforts. Mind, that’s a pretty awesome legacy.
I regret we won’t ever know their names, but we can still recognize and celebrate them. While not my only goal, it was one of them when I wrote Stain of a Nation. As impressive as the main protagonist, Talen, is, I made sure to shine the light on others who stood against darkness. Some of whose names you’ll learn, others you won’t.
In short, Stain of a Nation is a book about heroes, big and small, famous and anonymous. None of whom ever enslaved someone because of their skin color. Never donned a hood to terrorize, murder, or torture someone for the same. They marched for equity, not segregation. They stood to be heard and recognized as humans, not to intimidate or coerce silence and obedience.

Stain of a Nation: Falstaff Hardcover|Falstaff Paperback|Falstaff E-Book

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