Why Joan? by Eleanor Mercein KellySome time since, the author had the temerity innocently to publish a book ("Kildares of Storm"), which, like this one, employed for background the country with which she happens to be most familiar, the State of her adoption and of her affections. And great was the scandal thereof. Neighbors insisted upon recognising themselves in it, to their horror—or to their complacency, as the case might be. They also recognized the house described; although if one heard with impartial ear, the house appeared to possess as many different identities as localities, and despite the fact that the author, in order to guard against this very contingency, had taken many liberties with geography, even to the extent of moving mountains—imagination being on occasion almost as powerful as faith.
That history may not repeat itself, the author now hastens to assert that no self-respecting creative instinct, with the whole world of fancy at command, would care to inhibit productivity by the limitations imposed upon photography, invaluable as that science is in its place—which is not fiction. Ours the happy privilege of, for the moment at least, "shattering the world to bits and remolding it nearer to the heart's desire."
There is also among the craft an unwritten law against the holding up for public inspection those people with whom one has broken bread, so to speak; and as one is apt, in Kentucky, to have broken bread with all one's acquaintance, neighbors, friends and enemies may alike consider themselves safe from the present pen. If any think to recognize themselves in this book, let them recognize themselves quite as readily in the living people about them. For we are, after all, of one substance, varying only with circumstance and the different stages of development. And it is with these things only—with circumstance and the stages of development, with truths rather than facts, with men and women rather than personalities—that this author at least chooses to concern herself.
Eleanor Mercein Kelly.
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34801