Once again, I am going to begin by referring to Sarah Maza's Thinking About History. In her chapter How is History Produced? she says that in the twentieth century "writings about the past increasingly fell into distinct categories of "academic" and "popular."" Popular history can still be written by academics but stylistically it is written with "vivid, elegant prose, and a subject framed in a way that makes it accessible to nonspecialists by assuming no prior knowledge of the field." The subject matter "tends to be more traditional than that of academic history." The motivation for writing and reading it is often curiosity. She also says popular history includes stories, if they are not actually written as stories themselves.
I think Mill by David Macaulay may fall into the popular history category. Or perhaps it could be considered creative nonfiction. Or maybe it's historical fiction. I'm really at a loss on how to describe this.
The concept behind this beautifully illustrated book is a little difficult for me to grasp. It deals with mills inspired by those in the Blackstone historic area of Rhode Island, but instead of using the actual mills that are known to have been there, Macaulay created fictional ones with fictional people running them. The owners and other people whose journals and letters Macaulay "quotes" never existed. This is all fiction, though the journals, letters, and narrative are fiction that reflects events of the time period, such as the abolitionist movement, the Civil War, and the arrival of French Canadians to work there.
The depth of technical detail in the narrative describing these mills presumably is correct. Macaulay must have designed these imaginary mills that he then writes about and illustrates. So. there is fact involved with that?
After having written all the above, I'm going to describe Mill as historical fiction. However, Goodreads classifies it as nonfiction.
Macauley is an award-winning author illustrator who may be best known for The Way Things Work. He won the Caldecott Medal in 1991, and Mill may be considered a children's book. Certainly YA. I mention this because I found the reading rough going. But I will also offer right now that a family member who is a civil engineer read it in a few hours and said, "It's a real page turner."
I often hear that the publishing world likes books it can pigeonhole and market. I wonder if a book like this, and I think Macauley wrote a number of them, would be an easy sell these days.
What Were You Doing Reading a Book About Mills, Gail?
Well...
For some reason, I am interested in mills. I have an unsold book in which mill history plays a prominent role. If I write another book, a mill will figure in that one. I walk in the woods in Connecticut. You cannot spit without hitting an old dam or mill ruin here.
I own Mill. I asked for it for Christmas, because of my mill interest. I didn't realize the connection between the book and the Blackstone River Valley National Historic until I started reading the book just before we took off for a trip to the Blackstone area. Imagine my surprise!
We had a very hot few days in Rhode Island, so much so that we have put off a trip to another National Historic Site until next month. But we survived it.
And, yes, reading Mill while I was there, amongst the mills that inspired it, enhanced the experience.
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