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SAVANNAH, Ga. — Each year in February, the Savannah Book Festival draws writers from across the globe to the charming Hostess City, shining a spotlight not only on international talent but also on local literary voices.
Among the featured authors is Bennett Parten, Ph.D., an assistant professor of history at Georgia Southern University with a focus on the Civil War era. An esteemed contributor to The Washington Post, Parten will share insights from his latest book, “Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation.”
This publication offers a compelling narrative of Sherman’s March to the Sea, uniquely told from the viewpoint of the enslaved individuals who turned it into the most significant liberation event in U.S. history.
When questioned about his motivation for tackling a subject that many presume they understand but might actually have overlooked, Parten provided a thoughtful response.
PARTEN: The inspiration is twofold. Firstly, I hail from Royston, Georgia, a short drive from Athens. My family and I often vacationed in Savannah and the Sea Islands, retracing the very path of Sherman’s March. Secondly, I was influenced by E.L. Doctorow’s novel “The March.” One character, a freed woman named Wilma Jones, abandons everything to follow the army to Savannah. It dawned on me that Jones, while fictional, likely represents a multitude of individuals. Her story suggested a broader narrative waiting to be told.
: History is a lot of dates and facts. How did you take all those details and turn them into a narrative story?
PARTEN: I think it starts first and foremost with people. I think naturally drawn to other people’s stories because they remind us of our own. When you sit down to think about what makes a narrative, you’ve got to start with all the different elements. And the place to begin is really just characters, and there were some challenges with this project in that formerly enslaved people often do not appear in the historical record that often. And when they do, it is often inaccurate. But if you do enough research, you begin to encounter their stories. And so then it just becomes incumbent upon you as the writer, in constructing this narrative, to find a way to make characters out of them and to find ways to insert the human story into the overall narrative. It does, as a historian, take a little extra effort. Sometimes you have to think a little bit harder, work a little bit harder. But I think, narrative history like this is really the most powerful way to convey how history happened.
: Are you a disciplined writer? What is your writing process like day-to-day?
PARTEN: I’m a morning person. I will sit down about 8:00 and go to about noon. That is the time I set aside and really try to focus. I can be pretty disciplined. I can usually get quite a bit done.
: What skills do you think are most important for history writers?
PARTEN: I think being really curious and also imaginative. To think about the past, you have to be curious enough to want to know what happened. And it’s this level of curiosity that takes old narratives, old ways of understanding the past, and pushes them into to new territories and new boundaries. So I think being curious and naturally inquisitive are really good skills to develop.