Behind the Story: Shattering Paradigms

I have been asked how I come up with ideas for my novels. Sometimes I can point to something specific, such as an event or story in the news. However, at other times the idea develops slowly and evolves from several sources. The Shattering Paradigms series is an example of the latter.

In early 2024, I was reading a historical novel set in fascist Italy. During my reading, I thought it would be fun to write my own historical novel. However, I didn’t have a particular idea in mind.

At the time, I was also conducting research for a novel in The Intellectual Bodyguards series. The central conflict in that novel would occur in Fort Bend County, where I had moved in the fall of 2022. As a part of my research, I was searching for undeveloped land near my home.

As I was driving around, I spotted a large sign on a vacant parcel of land. The sign announced that the land would soon become Freedom Tree Park. When I returned home, I discovered that the Freedom Tree had been the location where local slaves learned of their emancipation on June 19, 1865. I was intrigued and began to study the local history.

In the years leading up to the Civil War, slaves outnumbered whites by more than three to one in Fort Bend County. The local economy depended on slave labor, and emancipation had a profound impact on both slaves and slaveholders.

The story of what occurred in Fort Bend County after emancipation was both inspiring and infuriating. Though the freedmen were subjected to periodic violence by racists such as the Ku Klux Klan, Blacks and whites lived together in the county in relative harmony for over twenty years. However, the passage of Jim Crow laws in the late 1880s relegated Blacks to second-class status.

Post-Reconstruction Fort Bend County provides a hint of what could have been—social and political equality for Blacks and whites. While that ideal was briefly realized, it did not endure. I decided to write a story in which it did endure, and Shattering Paradigms is that story.