What Makes Someone Revolt?

I asked myself the following questions in the development of characters in the novel and how these issues influenced their choices and actions:
​What causes a person to resist and fight against oppression?
How far and how hard does a person have to be pushed?
 
What are the kinds, forms, range, and expressions of revolts and their personal, social, political, economic, business, environmental, and historical impacts and results?

What changes have a chance of being made and/or not made in the face of opposition?

Under what conditions can  violence, diplomacy, and economic leverage be effective strategies?

Characters and Historical Events
 
The Lure of History For Writers and Readers
 
The chronology and events of history capture our attention for many reasons, among them being stories that entertain, educate, and inform. Whether writing historical fiction or non-fiction, I’m drawn into the societies and cultures of a particular period that inspire the creation of characters who bring that era to life. Not only do I experience this dynamic in books, but in films, plays, dance, music, and other art forms.
 
Researching history takes me into the exploration of new territory through reading other sources, interviews, travel, films theater, and other literary and art forms. A number of fine books are written from personal experience by authors who lived through those times. I count myself among contemporary authors grateful for historical secondary sources. Forays into the past for story material is a rewarding part of the creative process.
 
    

​My Inspiration For Writing The Revolutionist
 
My inspiration for the novel originated with the characters of Julie Josephson and her brother, Newt, and their friend, Aaron Peet, whose images were captured in a wood-framed photograph I saw of them while on a business trip in Ontario, Canada.
 
I chanced to stop in what had once been a small lumber mill town in a north-central region within the province. Coming off the narrow highway winding through dense fir and spruce forests, I noticed the sign of a museum converted from a late 1800s Victorian house and pulled into the small parking lot. From a high embankment, the house overlooked a rushing whitewater river that a century ago had been the channel for moving hundreds of thousands of fresh cut logs to downstream sawmills to be converted to boards.
 
When I entered the museum through a squeaky screen door, I said hello to a bearded old timer seated at a small wooden desk and graciously received a few pages of literature about the museum. My gaze roamed over the tools and artifacts of the timber trade and came to rest on the photograph, which I studied in detail, as described in the following excerpt below from the novel.
 
A framed photograph taken of them in the summer of 1898 hangs in the historical museum at St. Cloud, Minnesota.  It shows Newt Josephson’s sister, Julie, his boyhood friend, Aaron Peet, and Newt standing among a posed group of loggers in front of the Frazier River Mill.  The green tinged copper title plate at the bottom of the picture elicits a bemused smile --- Rivermen.
Because of the coveralls and wool shirts and work boots and caps they wore, an observer could not detect that Julie was a girl.  They didn’t hire girls or women, not even to cook in the lumber camps.  Logging was considered a man’s job.
Julie pretending to be a boy presented more of a problem than keeping her hair cut short, her voice pitched low, walking square and never screaming when she was afraid or crying when she got hurt.
Newt supposed they had the honor of being included in the photograph, because they were the three youngest members of the crew.  He was the oldest, sixteen.  Aaron was fifteen.
At the time, they had no better means to make a living and they were on the run from a man who wanted to kill them.
 
Recreating the lives of these main characters became the foundation of their story that expanded to myriad others in the context of historical events at the turn of the twentieth century.