Fact or Fiction?
I'm starting to wonder if I should veer more into fiction with this book, make it "inspired by" my family story instead of "based on." Then I could go where I wanted with it. But there's really only one aspect of the story I would change. The rest of it is so beautifully apt for a novel. There's a hero, there's a heroine, there's plenty of conflict, and there's even a ready-made villain.
For now, I will move on as I have been going. But I am giving myself permission NOT to load the story with a lot of exposition about what is going on in the world. I'm trying to imagine this story as Jane Austen might have written it - we knew the Napoleonic Wars were going on, we knew some of her characters even fought in it - but she didn't explain that conflict to her readers. Instead I will throw in some details in passing: for example, that my heroine's younger brothers go to school in the nearby town, without any explanation of what a small-town school in 1814 in Maine would be like.