Never Let History Get In the Way of Your Historical Romance – By Alina Adams
It’s bad enough when the present and future don’t work out the way you need them to, romantically speaking. But wouldn’t you expect better from the past?
As soon as I learned about Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region set up in the 1930s on the border between Russia and China by Josef Stalin, and designated as a place where persecuted Jews could live safely under Communism, I knew I had to set my next historical romance novel there.
My last book, The Nesting Dolls, followed a Soviet-Jewish family from Odessa, Ukraine, to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Many readers told me they had no idea about life in the USSR during the 1930s, including Stalin’s Great Terror, so I decided my next book would continue through that period, but set in an even less known place.
Don’t worry; I did my research. I read Masha Gessen’s book, Where the Jews Aren’t, watched the propaganda movie Seekers of Happiness, and explored Swarthmore College’s archives on the subject.
Then I started writing what became My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region, and my characters began doing things that didn’t exactly line up with historical events.
For example, I needed a train to arrive in the middle of a rainy night for the perfect setting where my heroine would first meet my hero. Historically, the train she would have taken arrived during the day and not in the rainy season. Also, I needed a second train across the platform so my heroine could see the ethnic Koreans being deported by Stalin. Historically, the train station only had one track.
I even had to think about specific dates. Growing up as a Soviet immigrant in America, I heard a story about someone who prayed for Franklin Roosevelt to open a Second Front during World War II. When Roosevelt did so in June 1944, this person named her daughter Eleanora in honor of Eleanor Roosevelt. This inspired my character Lena’s name. I needed to time Lena’s parents’ intimacy to nine months before D-Day, disregarding their feelings or convenience.
Similarly, for the first meeting at the train station, I had to find a date after Stalin started arresting former allies in Moscow, during the deportation of ethnic Koreans, and with enough time for my hero and heroine to fall in love before D-Day. Love truly is complicated!
I think I managed to squeeze in everything I needed—real-life historical events for the backdrop of My Mother’s Secret and the fictional romance at its heart. Some historians might argue over the details, and some romantics might feel parts are rushed or dragged out.
So, I want to ask readers: What’s more important, historical accuracy or unrestrained love? How accurate do you need your history to be in a historical romance? Should it take precedence, or does love conquer all?
I’m eager to hear your thoughts on this!
