Fredericksburg's Historic Houses Inspire Local Author's Fiction
An existing house on Caroline Street is the model for the house at the center of Ben Raterman's "Speak to Me."
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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A historic city such as Fredericksburg, to local author Ben Raterman, is like a library.
The houses in the city are like books in the stacks—but they’re only the dust covers.
“The people who lived in the houses, the architects who designed them, the people who built them—those are the stories,” Raterman said. “Unless you do the research [into these stories], all you have are dust covers.”
Raterman, who has lived in the Fredericksburg area since 2010, has uncovered some 30 or 40 of these stories through his research on downtown properties for the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation’s marker program.
And those stories in turn have inspired his original fiction. His novel Speak to Me, which was published in March of last year by the nonprofit Tennessee-based press April Gloaming, is a mystery built on an existing house, and it incorporates real-life characters and landmarks—such as the downtown library, Alum Spring Park, and the building that now houses Riverby Books—that may be familiar to local readers.
Speak to Me tells the story of two young children who live in a trailer park with their single mother, who works nights at Waffle House. According to family lore, their great-great-grandmother worked as a maid in a wealthy downtown home, and her employer left her some valuable jewelry.
“The kids want to find that jewelry and sell it,” Raterman said.
With help from a research librarian at the downtown library, they locate the house where their great-great-grandmother worked. They break in, and find a skeleton in the cellar.
“Things go south, east, and west from there,” Raterman said. “All kinds of things happen.”
The house in Speak to Me is based on 303 Caroline Street, which Raterman researched and toured “from attic to basement” with Gary Stanton, emeritus professor of historic preservation at the University of Mary Washington.
“It’s an intriguing house—it’s not particularly old, but it’s built on an 1800s foundation,” Raterman said. “It just passed on its history in a way to me, and I thought, ‘This is where I’ll put my protagonist.’”
Raterman has been writing fiction since he was in high school, and since retiring from a job at Dahlgren in 2010, he’s dedicated himself to writing full-time. Speak to Me is actually his second completed novel; he hasn’t yet found a publisher for the first, which is also set in Fredericksburg.
That book concerns a young architecture graduate who gets custody of her 7-year-old nephew when his father, her brother, is killed in Afghanistan. While trying to settle herself and her nephew in the community, she learns from a friend who served with her brother that a Taliban soldier is looking for her.
Raterman said he learned from the experience of trying to find a publisher for his first book that “it’s more difficult to market a book than to write one.”
“You have to be very precise when you are querying an agent,” he said. “They will not read a debut novel of 120,000 words. I realized that I needed a shorter book, and that I wanted to write books, ghost stories, about houses in Fredericksburg.”
That’s how Speak to Me came to be. Since it was published last year, Raterman has been working on marketing it—he’ll sign copies at the local Barnes and Noble store on August 2—and he’s also completed a third novel.
“I’m working full time on novels and short stories,” he said. “I take time to write every day. I’ll wake up at night with an idea right there from a dream, and I’ll have to write it down.”
Raterman’s research on houses for HFFI continues to inspire him. He likens that work to detective work—chasing leads from historic property records, deeds, insurance maps, and newspaper articles from the 1800 and 1900s to piece together stories about people.
“Oftentimes, the information you want is just not there—but [there’s always the hope that] it’s in somebody’s attic somewhere,” Raterman said. “Sometimes you hit pay dirt, but often it’s just dirt.”
“Now,” he continued with a chuckle, “I’m inventing my own stories.”
Penny Parrish reviewed Speak to Me for the Advance last summer; read her review here.
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