In honor of Black History Month I thought I’d highlight the black characters in my novels. Many people might not be aware that there are black characters in my novels, and that is intentional. My stories are about the fabric of our country and that includes people of all backgrounds, races, religions, sexual orientation and more. This mirrors my own life and so I have never thought it extraordinary to include a wide variety of characters in my stories.
If you pick up my first novel, “Red, White & Blues: Book One”, and read the synopsis you will see that it does mention Native American characters. This is an exception and the reason that I did so is because the journey of my character, Mike Blackhorse, from a reservation life in northern Wisconsin to owning his own business and raising his family in Monterey, California is central to the overall story.
However, it is also in this first novel that the first of my black characters are introduced, the most prominent and important being Louise Sinclair (later Louise Powell and still later Louise Booth). Louise is a young woman of nineteen or twenty when we first meet her, a transplant from Georgia who, like others of her generation, makes her way to San Fransisco during the early 1960s. Sandy Porter is the first to encounter her and they forge a lifelong friendship, often living and working together in various situations. Sandy is a white girl from an upper middle class family in nearby Boulder Creek, CA and the two young women bond quickly despite their different upbringings. When Sarah Somerton is picked up hitchhiking by Mike Blackhorse and they make their way to San Francisco, it is she who really finds an extraordinary friendship with Louise. Sarah had been born and raised in rural Louisiana and had experienced the prejudiced attitudes of her friends and family toward non-whites, mainly from her father, Quentin. However, Sarah did not share these views and her own sense of wanderlust coupled with a need to get away from the deep south made her an ideally open person. As time goes by we see the friendship of Louise and Sarah blossom through their southern roots, their love of cooking and their strong spirits and devotion to their families.
Of course there are a few incidents where the prejudice of others play into the lives of not only Louise, but her first husband, Cain Powell, a fiercely proud and intelligent black man who grew up in the low income neighborhood of Oakland, CA. When Martin Luther King is assassinated, Cain begins to question both his and Louise’s friendships with their white friends, including Sarah and Sandy and their boyfriends, Mike and Pete respectively. However, Louise, while devastated and scared by King’s death, quickly realizes that the path forward is to preserve those friendships. And she does. After Cain is killed in the line of duty as an Oakland police officer, Louise and their young son, Micheaux, make a critical move to San Francisco where she purchases an old bookstore formerly run by an old friend. Louise never lets adversity keep her down and she makes the bookstore into a successful business, where in the 1980s, it also becomes a hub of support for the gay community, which is being battered by the AIDS crisis.
Some years after Cain is killed, Louise meets a black photographer named Avery Booth. Booth had lived in London for several years, was married to a white woman and had a daughter, Iris, who remained in England with her mother when he moved back to San Francisco. When Louise introduces Avery to her white friends of so many years, there is a moment when Avery worries about what they will think of him, how they will perceive him as a black man. However, he needn’t worry because, just as in my own life, the friends that Louise has had for so many years do not judge people based on their skin color.
Louise’s son, Micheaux, decides to visit his mother’s relatives back in Georgia for a summer after high school graduation. There he not only has his first sexual experiences, but is for the first time really confronted with prejudice. It is indirect, but it is there in the Confederate flags and culture, which is still deeply rooted in the south in some respects. These observations were based on my own experience living in Georgia for three years. I, like Micheaux, was born and raised in California and was rarely exposed to prejudice in any serious form in my own life. I guess I should mention that yes, I am white, but my meaning here is that no one I knew was prejudice against anyone else. I have always had friends from all walks of life and in my novels, so does not only Micheaux (or Mikey as he is called), but everyone who is in my stories regardless of their race, religion or sexual orientation. Everyone gets along. Call me a dreamer if you like, but that is how I have always lived my life; so do my characters. There are exceptions, of course. There is one particular character who is prejudice against nearly everyone who isn’t like him, but he, again, is the exception.
Although Louise meets an untimely demise, she nevertheless stays a positive and strong force until the very end and her legacy leaves its mark not only on her son, but Sarah, Sandy, Mike and most forcefully a woman named Maura who had initially met Louise in San Francisco during the Sixties and who’s fate becomes utterly tied up with Louise’s wisdom, strength and acceptance of all of those she comes in contact with.
In my novels, race is discussed, but it is never dwelled upon. Race makes the characters who they are to some extent, but it never defines them. I have made every effort to weave all of these people together be they white, black, Asian, Hispanic, Native American or gay.
In a review of my first novel David Willson (VVA) expresses exactly what I always try to convey:
“Sage brings to life a huge multiracial cast of characters who are skillfully individualized. The author presents us with lives in America that are rarely seen in serious fiction, and these lives are portrayed in an evenhanded, non-judgmental, non-sensational manner.” (excerpt)
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