Fact in Fiction Friday: 5 Fascinating Facts From My Reading Week

Reading is entertainment but, for me, it can also be an education – new words, events in history, myths that turns out to be reality and vice versa. Here are just a few of the things I learned from the books I’ve read recently. Click on the title of the book to read my review.

In The Mountain Man’s Badge by Gary Corbin, set in a small town in Oregon near the Cascade Mountains, the hero, Sheriff Lehigh Carter, visits a diner and orders a ‘Reuben. Extra dressing. Fries.’  I’d never heard of a ‘Reuben’ and wondered what it was. Then, in the way things sometimes occur in life, I happened to be up in London to visit the theatre last week (since you ask, The Moderate Soprano starring the peerless Roger Allam). My husband, who is an aficionado of such establishments, took me to a Dutch bar he knows called Da Hems and there on the menu amongst the list of sandwiches was a ‘Reuben’. Its origins and how it got its name are disputed and there are slight variations in the ingredients however Jamie Oliver describes it as ‘the heavenly piling of hot pastrami, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and Russian dressing into two slices of soft rye bread’.  It was delicious.

Source: Jamie Oliver website

In The King’s Daughter by Stephanie Churchill, I came across references to an item of women’s clothing that I’ve often seen mentioned in historical fiction but never been entirely sure what it actually is – the kirtle. Luckily, in another piece of serendipity, I saw an article featuring the garment shared on her Facebook page by Catherine Meyrick, author of Forsaking All Other. The article has some great pictures of how a kirtle was constructed and worn in relation to other garments.

Source: Walking Through History Facebook Page

Kirtle wasn’t the only word that caught my eye in The King’s Daughter. A method of transport mentioned quite a few times in the book is a palanquin: ‘The carriage without wheels…was more or less a wide, cushioned chair with raised sides all around. The seat centred on a platform supported by two stout poles carried on the shoulders of six burly men.’ I knew vaguely that this was some kind of litter (defined as a human-powered, wheel-less vehicle for transport of people) but was curious to find out what it looked like. This was the best (copyright free) image of what I believe is being described I could come up with.  Two burly men missing, sadly.

Source: Wikipedia

Set in Wiltshire, Nicola Ford’s debut crime novel, The Hidden Bones, involves both an archaeological excavation and a murder investigation. There’s also the little matter of a missing artefact – a ‘sun disk’.   What a surprise it must be to uncover something like that which has lain undiscovered for so long. (By the way, that’s not dissimilar to the murder mystery at the heart of in the book.) In fact, a Bronze Age sun disc was discovered in Wiltshire back in 1947 but only put on public display for the first time in June 2015 to coincide with the Summer Solstice.  You can read about it and view images of the disc by following the link below.

Source: This Is Wiltshire website

My final ‘fascinating fact’ comes from a book I’ve just finished and will be reviewing shortly – The Devil’s Half-Mile by Paddy Hirsch (due to be published on 5^th July 2018). We’re back to American foodstuffs, this time something referred to as a ‘savory chonkey’.  I’ll let a quote from the book, set in 18^th century New York, reveal more plus  give you a taste (pun intended) of the fabulous style and verve of the writing. (Don’t worry; there is a superb glossary as well.) ‘The sidewalks were equally busy. Shoppers and passersby competed for space with a crush of handsellers and their carts: chive fencers selling cutlery, swell fencers touting the sharpness of their sewing needles, flying stationers flogging their penny ballads and histories, crack fencers offering bags of nuts, and everywhere the cakery pannam fencers, whose trolleys were piled with pies, sweet bowlas tarts and savoury chonkeys, the minced-meat pastries that no true New Yorker could resist.’  So, for UK readers, a chonkey is something similar to a Cornish pasty perhaps? Yes, I know, now you want to know what ‘sweet bowlas tarts’ are as well. I’m still searching for definitive information on that one but it’s probably an apple, or other fruit, tart.

What fascinating facts in fiction have you come across this week?