True Bits: The Crushed Violet

(Spoiler alert! You might not want to keep reading if you haven’t finished the book–each “true bit” gives the background on something real that inspired part of the novel: some big, some small)

This True Bit is a tiny one…

There’s a moment at Bull Run when the soldiers are running toward the embankment and their first real battle and Rosetta sees Jeremiah step on a violet and crush it underfoot.

That came from a young soldier’s remembrance of marching through a field full of wildflowers, and several of the soldiers picking some and sticking them in their hats. It struck me as such an innocent gesture– a gesture of sweetness in the midst of war. I wanted to use that idea of soldiers coming across something beautiful and natural and delicate right at the moment they were entering battle. And I wanted that crushed violet to be trying to raise itself back up after having been stepped on because that seemed to me the perfect metaphor for what the soldiers had to do after experiencing battle, especially for the first time.