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BLOG: A Voice In The World - From the heart of Ginny Dye
September 18, 2013
I'm SO Glad The War Is Over!!
Several weeks ago I watched the 50th anniversary celebration of the March on Washington. Tears spilled down my cheeks so many times; perhaps because, through the writing of The Bregdan Chronicles, I have a deeper understanding of the price African-Americans have paid to get where they are today – and just why they are still so far from where they should be.
The beginning of their freedom – the end of slavery – came during the American Civil War.
Shallow thinking… bad decisions… media driven choices… more than 620,000 men killed or wounded… endless heartbreak for families… millions of lives impacted during America’s bloodiest conflict.
In order to write the first five books of The Bregdan Chronicles I had to dive into thousands of hours of intense research. What I discovered sickened and angered me. In spite of the horrors of all the following wars, not one has matched the atrocities of the American Civil War – the one we brought on ourselves.
Don’t worry…I’m not going to give away any of the story line because I know that not all of you have read all the way through to The Last, Long Night yet.
So why am I writing this?
Because I’m SO glad the war is over! Perhaps this Blog is my way of bringing closure… I’m not sure I could have written about one more battle, or about one more decision that resulted in the suffering of so many innocent people. The truth of what I learned infuriated me, saddened me, and forced me to dig deep into my heart and soul to find the bright lights shining in the midst of so much darkness.
I am constantly astonished that history has “romanticized” the Civil War. Battles are re-enacted without showing the true horror. We teach it in our schools without bothering to tell the whole truth. How can children commit to making sure such a thing never happens again when they’re not even given the respect of being told the truth?
The only thing I was sure of after just the first few months of research is that I knew NOTHING about the American Civil War. That very truth made me angry, as well. How am I supposed to make wise decisions when my education was so shallow and one-sided?
I love history. I would have told you I knew a lot about the Civil War. I knew nothing.
I grew up in the South. Want to guess what version I heard?
Many of you grew up in the North. I already know you heard something different than I did.
If you live somewhere else in the world, you’re probably totally confused by the conflict that ripped a young country apart. You’re not alone. It’s impossible to make sense out of something that never should have happened in the first place.
So now I’m doing research for Book # 6 (Carried Forward By Hope). I’ve longed to reach this point because I was so tired of writing about the war. There were many hard things that happened during the Reconstruction years in America as a divided country worked to become one nation again, but at least the efforts were about rebuilding – not just destruction.
I’m so glad that now I get to put my focus and attention on rebuilding this great country – as well as shining a bright light so that TRUTH takes center stage!
I’m so glad that now I have the opportunity to show how what happened in the years following the war have reverberated down through the rest of our history – making the March on Washington necessary, and causing so much racial turmoil in our country.
Perhaps if we can understand, we can search deep in our hearts to discover what we really believe and feel – and just how that impacts the world we live in right now, as well as the relationships that surround us.
Carried Forward By Hope comes out December 1st!
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