Civil War novel has roots in Hodgdon

By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
    PRESQUE ISLE – First-time fictional novelist Valerie Josephson recently held a discussion and book signing at the Mark and Emily Turner Memorial Library in Presque Isle giving readers an inside look at her debut novel, “Who Would Not Be a Soldier!”
    Geared toward young adult readers with an interest in history, the Civil War and the 20th Maine, “Who Would Not Be a Soldier!” follows two 19-year-old farmers from Aroostook County as they enter the Civil War under the 20th Maine regiment.
    “It’s the story of my great-grandfather, Mansfield Ham, who lived in Hodgdon,” said Josephson. “I had started doing my mother’s family history around 1987 and finished it to my satisfaction in about six years and then I put it on the shelf and updated it as I got some further information from time to time.
    “When I retired, my cousin, Terry Hamm Morris, who lives in Mars Hill, said, ‘Congratulations, now it’s time for you to write the book.’ I said, ‘What book?’ and she said the book about Mansfield Ham. I thought it was a good idea, and in June of 2007 I started writing. After a month of being consumed writing this book, I said, ‘The only way I’m going to get out of the house is if I get a dog,’ so I went and got a dog and she became my ‘co-author.’ She would come every day at 4:30 p.m. and lay her paw upon my arm while I was at my computer as if to say, ‘OK, let’s go.’”
    Josephson said it was fun researching and writing about her great-grandfather.
    “The farm he worked was always his mother’s, and she had a daughter who was mentally disturbed and she had to care for her, so she never signed the farm over to Mansfield,” she said. “Around 1890 there were a lot of recessions and he went bankrupt, moved to Weston and drove an oxen team between Weston and Houlton for a couple of years and then bought a farm in Lee, which is where my mother was born. His son, Lyman, married and had six kids and that’s the family where Terry and I came from.”
    Josephson, who visited Aroostook County for research purposes eight times during the writing process, finished the first draft of the book by December 2007. She then had her daughter – a screenplay writer in Hollywood – and her fiancé read it.
    “They contributed enormously helping me to evolve character development and the like,” she said. “I have edited a medical journal, so I was familiar with the writing process, but not fiction. It wrote itself … it just poured out of me. Day after day I’d go in there and just write. Each chapter made the characters different, so I never mapped out a chapter until the day I wrote it to keep it real fresh.”
    Josephson has also spoken at the Houlton library.