Hanna's Promise

   The prequel to this novel, After Bondage and War, was its inspiration. The characters in that work taught us what we needed to know, drove us forward and compelled us to tell the rest of the story. In a generational cycle, the young ones from there become the old ones at the end of this sequel as the new generation lives their lives in America's continuing tumultuous historical times. As some leaves fall and others grow in their place, so too with the generations of flesh and blood, one dies and another is born.

   The focal point of After Bondage and War  was 1865, the end of the Civil War. For Hanna's Promise, 1865 is a retrospective reference point. 

   Two colored women are the heroines of the story. They are sisters - one spiritual and one intellectual. Their brother is the hero. Their father is their inspiration before his death. Two affluent southern white couples provide the kindly foundation to make the story possible.    

   We end the story corporeally in Ohio where the last one ended but about 40 years later. Spiritually, the story ends simultaneously where it began in Alabama, not far in time or place from Faulkner’s imaginary world in Mississippi.

   Whether it's called a novel or something else, all fictional work, if based on a particular period and its people and events, is historical fiction.

      - David Claire Jennings