Richard Peck has a lot to say about writing, and if you are looking for inspiration, he is an ideal place to start.  Peck didn’t start writing until he was 37 years old.  Before that, he was teacher of English and Literature, and he was constantly teaching what good writing and good reading was to young students.  As Peck would say, his life changed one day and he became a writer.

             Being a writer, to Peck, is about being a reader.  “Nobody but a reader ever became a writer,” he says (Peck 1991).  Peck is devoted to his craft and encourages young people towards writing without giving them an unrealistic view of the work involved.  Peck himself recommends each page be crafted and rewritten at least six times and that aspiring writers work to expand their vocabularies as far as they can.  He also recommends that you carve out time to practice writing, which, he says, takes as much practice as playing the piano and more than playing football (Peck 1991). 

            Fair Weather and The River Between Us are both historical novels with engaging characters, detailed and authentic settings, and entertaining plots.  Of the two novels, The River Between Us tackles a more serious historical context, that of the Civil War, race relations, and life in a time of such conflict and divide.  The River Between Us is a complex novel with more than one story being told.  At the beginning, Howard Hutchings and his father are traveling to visit Howard’s grandparents, great-aunt and great-uncle in Grand Tower, Illinois.  When Howard sees this part of his family he wonders “how many layers you’d have to scrape away until you came to the time when these old people were young.  If they ever were.”  At this point in the narration, only at the onset of the story, Grandma Tilly takes over the narration of the story of the lives of herself and the other seemingly distant relatives of Howard’s.  The time in the novel switches from 1916 to 1861, in the middle of the Civil War to a divided time and place in the country. 

            The River Between Us focuses primarily on young Tilly, age 16, and what happens in her life when two mysterious strangers came north from New Orleans on the Mississippi River and entered Tilly’s life and the life or her family.  Delphine Duval is glamorous, mysterious and sure of herself.  When she and Calinda, her traveling companion who readers late find out is Delphine’s sister,  arrive in Grand Tower, Illinois because it is too dangerous to continue to St. Louis, Tilly’s mother takes the two on in her house.  Tilly is taken into the mystery and wonder of Delphine, in all of her fine clothing and French accent.  When Tilly’s twin brother Noah joins the Union army and falls ill far from home, Tilly and Delphine travel to find him and bring him home.  Tilly and Delphine’s trip is a turning point in the story and the realities of war are woven into the story with complex accuracy and acute detail in the plot.  The relationships between the characters are the most telling, with Delphine becoming more of a sister than a mysterious foreigner and Tilly awakening to the world beyond Grand Tower.  When the story of Tilly is concluded, Howard Hutchings resumes his narration of the original visit to his grandparent’s house.  Peck’s power and resonance as a storyteller is not to be underestimated – there is still one final surprise for the reader that brings together the past with the present day. 

            Fair Weather is set in rural Illinois in 1893.  Rosie Becket is fourteen, headstrong, and only knows of life in her small rural farming village.  The novel open with the sentence, “It was the last day of our old lives, and we didn’t even know it.”  So begins the tale of Rosie, her older sister Lottie, and her younger brother Buster and their trip to the World’s Colombian Exposition in Chicago.  The chance to attend the Fair is thanks to their distant Aunt Euterpe, rich and widowed, still mourning after four years.  After much thought and consideration, Rosie's mother announces that the girls will go, along with Buster, to visit their Aunt Euterpe and attend the Fair.  Mrs. Beckett will remain behind, however, a farm family never having time to spare.  Once the children have boarded the train bound for Chicago, a surprise visitor or two come aboard – unrefined, uninvited and boisterous Granddad Fuller and, later, his dog Tip. 

            Peck is a master at creating realistic and authentic settings.  The River Between Us not only brings the harsh realities of war to life, but it puts a face on war with the character of Noah and the tragedy of Mrs. Pruitt losing a husband and a son to war.  Though Noah didn’t die, Tilly’s mother died of her own grief. According to Perri, “Peck captures the light and dark sides of the Pruitt family, the sweetness of tiny moments, the excruciating pain of a distraught mother's words” (2003).  Delphine and Calinda give yet another face to the war and to race relations during the time.  Many people thought Delphine was a spy and Calinda was her slave.  Yet the two sisters were just trying to survive as any other people would during the time.  Not only are the settings in each novel integral to the novel, but the novel couldn’t exist without the setting.  It is the historical context that makes each character who they are during that time in history.  The historical context makes the story yet it makes the story even more about each character because the novels are really about the people and how they handle the historical events in their lives.  After all, they weren’t history at the time – it was just life.  Peck said, “The point is historical novels are not about wars. They’re about people and relationships” (Rochman 2004).

            Both novels speak to youth and the experiences of youth.  Neither Tilly nor Rosie knew the experiences they were about to have.  Both were young, inexperienced and only knew of the worlds as the square miles that surrounded them.  For Tilly, Delphine entered her world and changed it.  As Tilly says in the novel, Delphine made her consider other worlds.  “I didn’t know what to make of that great world she came from,” Tilly says, “but she made me want more of my own.”  For Rosie, the Fair itself opens her eyes to the world around her.  In the following passage, Rosie sees the Fair for the first time: "We were scared, of course, but I longed to be a poet, to pin this vision to a page.  It had a beauty beyond your wildest dreams, and so big, it made us mice.  It was too much world for me all at once."  The Fair exists  as a character itself.  It comes to life with Buffalo Bill Cody, Lillian Russell, the sights, smells, sounds and experiences it has to offer. 

            Peck’s brilliance as a storyteller rests primarily in his characters.  His characters are the center of his novels – they give the reader someone to care about, someone to identify with, someone to experience life through.  Just as Tilly is wide-eyed around Delphine and all of her clothes and finery, so is the reader.  We marvel at her self-assured nature.  Rosie Becket brings life to the story – her narration is up to the minute with anecdotes of her sister, brother, and grandfather.  The reader sees the Fair through her eyes like they are seeing the world open up for the first time.  Peck also brings life to minor characters in his novels, such as Granddad Fuller in all of his quirky ways and habits.  Granddad is a character through and through, providing plenty of room for humor and laughter throughout the story.  Such as Granddad insulting Aunt Euterpe’s cook one too many times, which caused the entire family to leave late at night to get supper and their first glimpse of the fair. . . "Helaca- toot, Terpie!" he cried out. "What kind of excuse for soup is this? It looks like somthin' drained out of the umbrella stand." Or Granddad’s insistence on seeing Lillian Russell and Buffalo Bill Cody, providing some of the most entertaining excerpts from the novel.  From the first chapter of Fair Weather, Peck brings the reader into the characters of the novel.  We see Granddad in his daily commute to town and his set ways.  We see Lottie’s maturity compared with Rosie’s youthful, headstrong ways.  We see Buster as “quicksilver” – here one moment and gone the next, constantly popping up when you need him least.  And we see the world of the farm – the genuinely hard labor involved in day to day life.  The first glimpse of these characters carries the reader from page one of the novel to the very end, providing such enjoyable characters that it is sad to finish the book, however fulfilling the story is.  According to Flynn, “Peck makes the exposition come alive as much for his twenty-first-century readers as for his richly imagined characters” (2001).

        Richard Peck does the best thing a writer of historical fiction can do for a reader: he brings characters and history together in a way that makes the reader understand the present in light of the past and through the people of the past.  History is not about facts as much as it is about people - Peck knows this and he gives his readers the opportunity to discover this as well. 

Sources

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Flynn, Kitty.  "Fair Weather (Book Review)." Horn Book Magazine 77, no. 6 (2001): 757, http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&Authtype=cookie,ip,url,uid&db=aph&an=5484934, accessed 31 October 2004.

Peck, Richard.  Anonymously Yours.  Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Julian Messner, 1991.  ISBN 0671741624.

Perri, Lynne. "Peck's "River" carries young readers into war."  USA Today, October 30, 2003, http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,url,uid&db=f5h&an=J0E056331060103, accessed 31 October 2004. 

Rochman, Hazel.  "Talking with Richard Peck." Book Links 14, no. 1 (2004): 44, http://search.epnet.com/login.aspx?direct=true&Authtype=cookie,ip,url,uid&db=aph&an=14388437, accessed 31 October 2004.