Published: October 29, 2008 08:51 pm            

A passion for Harpers Ferry

Debut novel tells of growing up in the shadow of John Brown

FAIRMONT — Every good West Virginian knows the story of John Brown.

A Jefferson County native has now penned a semi-autobiographical novel called “The Night I Freed John Brown.” This debut book is for young readers.

John Michael Cummings grew up in Harpers Ferry and graduated in 1981 from Jefferson High School. He’s lived in Brooklyn for 10 years, but his heart has never left “the Ferry.”

Set in Harpers Ferry, this is the story about 13-year-old Josh Conners, who is “searching for a way to keep his family together and to somehow understand his father’s puzzling rage and anger,” Cummings said in a telephone interview from his Brooklyn home.

“He’s seeking a father figure. He gyrates to an interesting non-native family living next door ... theater-minded, free-thinking” types from Massachusetts.

“He’s adopted into their family, so to speak. He partakes in a play about John Brown. This enrages his father because his son is defying him. And this sets into motion a breaking open of family secrets.

“Through the play and its aftermath, we find what is really upsetting the father.”

Cummings grew up in Harpers Ferry, site of John Brown’s famous raid on the federal arsenal in 1859. In fact, he lived across the street from the John Brown Wax Museum, which featured a life-size figure of an angry-looking Brown in the front window.

“That figure was always staring at us,” Cummings said. “When our venetian blinds were open, that’s the first thing we saw ... John Brown lunging at us with his musket.

“I always though of him as our father, but blurred. The father and John Brown are one and the same in the book, which is autobiographical.

“But it’s different because John Brown did something with his anger. He had an impassioned cause. The father was pointless with his anger.

“So freeing John Brown is really freeing the father.”

It was a challenge, he said, pulling this all together in his book.

“Writing with John Brown as a background can threaten to dwarf the ideas (in the book). He brings such a looming quality.”

This has doomed many fictional accounts of the martyred abolitionist, who was hanged in nearby Charles Town after having been found guilty of treason.

“A guy in the park service told me that only nonfictional accounts have really succeeded there. Every fiction was a failure because the historical figure dominates.

“I’ve knocked history down to size in my book. I’ve taken the traits and put them into ordinary people living in the town. John Brown’s legendary rage in the father. Frederick Douglass’ great booming voice in the neighbor.

“Otherwise, the same thing might have happened because of the overwhelming historical element.”

“Josh Conners is me in a way, absolutely,” Cummings said. “It’s very much autobiographical.

“He’s fairly sensitive and creative, and cannot show this with his father. He’s struggling to find his way out. It’s the classic story.

He’s already working on his second book, “The Scratchboard Project,” about Bolivar, the “sister town” of Harpers Ferry.

“It’s about a fictional historical discovery that changes the town and mushrooms it into having a more historical importance than Harpers Ferry.”

The tiny hamlet of Harpers Ferry — the easternmost and lowest points in the state — and some say where the Civil War actually began — will never leave him.

“It’s where my heart is,” Cummings said. “I’ve been here in New York City for about 10 years, but all my writing is about that area.

“I miss it so much that I write about it with a passion. It’s a strange, bittersweet formula. If I were there (in Harpers Ferry), I would not be able to put that yearning for it in my writing.

“And without the expert editorial help I’ve gotten, I would not have been able to shape the plot. Storytelling is really puzzlemaking. You’re fitting the pieces together.”

Cummings’’ short stories have appeared in more than 75 literary journal, including North American Review, The Kenyon Review and The Iowa Review. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice. His short story, “The Scratchboard Project,” received an honorable mention in The Best American Short Stories 2007 and is the basis for his second book.

His novella, “The House of My Father,” was a finalist in the 2006 Miami University Novella Contest and is the basis for “The Night I Freed John Brown.”

The Boston Globe said this about “The Night I Freed John Brown”: “(It) mixes domestic drama, American history, adventure story, and page-turning mystery. There are marvelous plot twists and surprises right to the very end. One can’t help liking young Josh, no matter how flawed he may be. He is funny, vulnerable, tough, and observant ... Humor and sadness lie cheek by jowl. ... Cummings writes with distinctive West Virginia flavor ... And his prose can be pure poetry.”

“The Night I Freed Jonn Brown” is available through Amazon.com and various distributors.

For more information, visit www.johnmichaelcummings.com.

E-mail Debra Minor Wilson at dwilson@timeswv.com.

        

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