Faked into Non-Fiction

I just got done reading The Red Tent, a book that’s been on My List for quite some time.  Although I enjoyed the story, I couldn’t help wondering how much of what Anita Diamant wrote was actually true.  Given the fact that she is an esteemed non-fiction writer, I give her the benefit of the doubt, but how much filling in of the pieces really is there?  Have I been faked into believing the story is actually true even though it isn’t?

To answer my question I went to Diamant’s webpage http://www.anitadiamant.com/.  On it she answers a few of my questions.  Questions, it seems, others also had.  Here she is very clear on the fact about her facts.  She readily states that her prose is simply that, creative work of her own.

This is a work of well-researched historical fiction, but are there limits to what one might find in the historical record – how does imagination take up the task when research is done?

My research focused on the everyday lives of women in the ancient Near East. I discovered tantalizing details about those lives – for example, the process of spinning wool was pretty much ceaseless as far as I could tell. There were spindles for use while walking, which suggests that women’s hands were rarely, if ever, idle.

But there was a great deal I could not find. Women’s accomplishments, until the very recent past, have been "written" on the bread they baked, the clothing they fashioned, the children they bore and reared. These are monuments that crumble into dust and that is where imagination took over. In many ways, my research focused on avoiding anachronisms: details and ideas that belong to a later historical period. Thus, there are no chickens or tomatoes in the food that appear in The Red Tent, but I did invent "recipes" based on foodstuffs that would have been available in that time and place.

          The answer, then, is that just like all historical fiction, this is an imaginative piece of work centered on the historical time about which it is written.  Diamant attempts as much as possible to recreate many accurate details of the time period as possible. The trouble, of course, being that very little evidence of the time exists.  As Diamant says there is no evidence of the tiny details which novelists crave.

          Perhaps it is because the book is written in some context of The Bible that I (and many others) have become so caught up in the truths and half-truths.  Whatever the reason, the novel has given me a push in an interesting direction. . . Genesis.