Tenderfoot Writer

Q. & A. with

Author Norm Ledgin

TW:  When you first launched The Jayhawker as a serial twenty-five years ago, how did you come up with the idea?

NL:  Readers of The Blue Valley Gazette, a country weekly my wife Marsha and I published in Stanley, Kansas, showed enormous interest in the history of Southeast Johnson County (KS).  I made certain the paper carried at least one well-researched history article a week.  The year after we started the paper, I decided to inject some adventure into it—but only if I could serialize it like “The Perils of Pauline.”

TW:  Meaning?

NL:  Come up with a cliff-hanger at the end of each episode, like that classic movie serial, making the targeted audience look forward to the next one.

TW:  Did that work for The Jayhawker?  And does that hold true in the book?

NL:  For the most part, but to make the story play out logically, a writer can only use so many cliff-hangers.  Some episodes begged to be rounded off neatly.  While adapting the serial for the book, I let each chapter faithfully follow and represent the corresponding episode.  Logical continuity of the story became as important a standard as creating a page-turner.

TW:  And are your fictional characters patterned after real people of 1850s Kansas or Missouri?

NL:  They’re composites of people I’ve read about who were active in the Border War. Of course there are some real-life people I took liberties with, such as Chief Black Bob and John Brown and the man who later became known as “Wild Bill” Hickok. 

TW:  Malcolm Erskine seems so complex.  The entire story unfolds from his perspective.  Was it difficult to stay in his head, as opposed to telling the story from others’ points of view? 

NL:  Not at all.  I wanted to make him seem as real as possible, with all the strengths and dreams and frustrations and weaknesses that might be common to a mixed-race drifter, someone who matured by suddenly being thrust into a history-making role.

TW:  And how do you measure the success or failure of your development of Erskine, a fictional hero?

NL:  One way I remember quite well from the 1980s, when the story first appeared.  People would come up to me after reading a particular episode and say things like, “I know exactly the place Erskine used for an ambush.  I went there and poked around, and I  believe, on the rocks, I saw traces of the action you wrote about.”  Or they’d tell me of great-uncles or other forebears who rode with Erskine against Bushwhackers.

TW:  None of it true, of course.

NL:   What more could I hope for than have a character of my creation come alive for readers?  Look at all the people who think there really was a Sherlock Holmes.

TW:  Why did you decide to make Erskine such a womanizer?

NL:  Much more sought-after by women than a Casanova.  Something in the women of that time—perhaps an attraction by the unusual coffee-and-cream tone of his skin, perhaps the romantic female mindsets on the frontier, possibly his motherless vulnerability—made them fall for him head over heels.

TW:  Or perhaps to let you create a spicier story?

NL:  Perhaps, though it’s essentially the story that was mailed to people’s homes every week, where even children could read it.

TW:  Not R-rated, however.

NL:  Definitely not, and even now, in book form, it would hang around PG.  There’s now a single use of the f-word among nearly two hundred thousand words.  And no love scene is graphic.  I wanted one, but Marsha—who was there at the creation of The Jayhawker a quarter-century ago—put her foot down.

TW:  Did she help write the story?

NL:  No, but I don’t think she ever forgave me for killing off one of the most appealing female characters.  The week I did that back then, she chewed me out royally.

TW:  Finally, Norm, there’s one scene where the horse Ebony shows a heck of a lot more animal intelligence and attachment and ingenuity than people think horses capable of.  Weren’t you stretching things a bit?

NL:  I know the scene you mean, and no, it wasn’t a stretch.  When I was a kid going to circuses and rodeos and so-called wild west shows at Madison Square Garden, New York, I actually saw a horse do what I described.  I don’t believe humans have a lock on acts of love.  We’re only now scratching the surface to understand the capabilities and emotions of our fellow creatures.