I Was a Revolutionary
Andrew Malan Milward opens his collection of short stories with an academic investigation of the 1863 raid on Lawrence, Kansas, by Quantrill and his men. This exploration is collected over the course of the unnamed narrator’s journey from oblivious young female resident of Lawrence to fascinated undergraduate, majoring in history, at the University of Kansas (KU). Like the other seven stories in this collection, this first story blends fact with fiction, linking both to academic studies.
All of the short stories focus on historical events in Kansas but, like the first story about the raid on Lawrence, are strongly connected to the social and historical events taking place in the United States. The second story, “O Death,” for example, explores the efforts of one African-American family to reach Nicodemus, a Kansas city established in 1877 during the Reconstruction Period after the Civil War. The obstacles they must overcome in their journey to a town established by African Americans for African Americans is heartbreaking; white riverboat captains, for example, refuse to take on African American passengers, stranding the family and others for three months as they wait for someone to transport them away from the draconian South.
The historical characters in these stories often overlap, but the various voices of the narrators are always compelling, drawing you into this fascinating study of the role Kansas played in American history.
