Heroes and Grief

Twenty-six years ago, after my mother was murdered, my mind was a shambles. For months (years, maybe) I could barely concentrate enough to write. I also found it hard to read. Then I chanced upon a review of Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring novels set during the Napoleonic Wars at the turn of the 19th century.

Reading O’Brian’s 20-book series, I sailed off in the company of a valiant British naval officer named Jack Aubrey and his ship’s physician, Stephen Maturin, a complex and equally brave man involved in espionage.

Aubrey and Maturin travel the globe on ships that Aubrey commands. They meet with illness, storms, shipwrecks, the tumult of ship-to-ship warfare and hand-to-hand combat, and human treachery. O’Brian’s vivid prose and his willingness to delve into people’s deepest thoughts and feelings draw you into his stories and let you identify with his characters.

british frigates capture spanish ships in 1804; image courtesy wikimedia commons

Amid grief and loss, I found solace in the fictional world O’Brian had created. The first time I read his novels, it was to escape. The second was to study his writing technique and his use of language. I think there was a third time in there, as well. Last year, with the pandemic in full swing, I read all 20 of the books again. They did not disappoint. 

Most people love stories about heroes who go on difficult quests, venture to hazardous places, and confront powerful foes. Early humans no doubt told such tales as they lounged around fires near the mouths of caves while darkness fell and large animals prowled outside. Probably they related stories of their fellows who had gone off and challenged those dangerous beasts, or obtained fire, or found new lands where life was easier. They encountered gods, tricksters, spirits. They vied with human rivals. They returned changed: richer and wiser, but often wounded by their trials. 

In 1949, a literature professor named Joseph Campbell published The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he described the story pattern of a classic hero’s journey, or “monomyth.” Campbell identified 17 stages to the journey and noted that hero stories from around the world – from vastly different cultures, times, and places – share many of the same characteristics.

I’ve never read the Odyssey or the Iliad, epic poems and archetypal hero stories. But I got a taste of ancient Greece and its myths through the historical novels of Mary Renault. I particularly liked The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea, both about Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur and king of Athens. Renault’s novels present what critics have called “an archaeologically and anthropologically plausible story that might have developed into the myth.”

Heroes appear in many genres and guises. My wife, the writer Nancy Marie Brown, has long had a hands-down favorite hero story: The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Years ago I arrogantly dismissed the book as mere fantasy, a children’s story. Fortunately I gave it a try. The novel swept me away. The writing was superb. As the small and insignificant hobbit Frodo Baggins undertook what seemed to be a doomed mission to save his world from destruction, his bravery and determination inspired me.

Hero stories transport us beyond the mundane and the sometimes truly awful aspects of our lives. Tolkien fought in the trenches during World War I, and the horror he experienced as a British foot soldier comes through in The Lord of the Rings. Writing the story may have been an attempt to heal himself from the trauma he’d suffered.

After my mother died, I found myself attracted to hero stories: mysteries and thrillers, mostly. Books whose characters fight evil, uphold justice, and strive to restore a sense of right and wrong in the world.

Mystery heroes can be diverse and far-flung: A police detective in Victorian London suffering from amnesia (William Monk, created by the author Anne Perry). A serene, convivial, “traditionally built” private investigator in Botswana (Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith). A self-doubting, reform-minded lawyer during the reign of Henry VIII (the hunchbacked Matthew Shardlake, by C.J. Sansom). A modern Navajo tribal policeman and aspiring traditional healer who must ceremonially purify himself of “corpse sickness” after examining a dead body (Jim Chee, in Tony Hillerman’s novels).

In my mysteries, I try to present my main character, an 1830s county sheriff named Gideon Stoltz, as someone real to the reader. Gideon solves crimes by observing and reasoning. Although unsure of his own abilities, he’s capable and resourceful. He’s an outsider, Pennsylvania Dutch among the clannish Scotch-Irish residents of fictional Colerain County. He’s brave and he’s noble, willing to put his life on the line to help others.

And Gideon is wounded. His mother was murdered when he was ten years old, and he found her body. He’s on a quest to deliver justice to those who’ve been wronged, and to become whole again: a hero’s quest, even if he doesn’t realize it.

(I’ve written before about my mother’s death and how it affected me. You can read about it HERE.)