VILLAGE OF FAYETTEVILLE – In his new historical fiction novel titled “High Bridge,” one-time Fayetteville resident Michael Miller has a pair of prominent figures from the past crossing paths within the village.
Miller’s debut book sees local suffragist, abolitionist and champion of Native American rights Matilda Joslyn Gage interacting with and befriending Grover Cleveland, who spent several of his formative years in Fayetteville before serving as the president of the United States for two non-consecutive terms.
The novel goes on to focus on the notable natives of the village as adults and their navigation of pressing issues in the country.
In focusing on Gage and Cleveland in their youth, those chapters delve into how the two were raised by their parents with some literary liberties taken.
Miller described Gage’s mother and father as “free thinkers” and wrote in his novel about the family’s real-life efforts assisting runaways on the Underground Railroad.
“Her parents were, on our current scale, liberal—it’s hard to use that term and shift it around over decades or centuries, but they certainly were in for individual rights,” Miller said.
Cleveland’s upbringing emphasized a greater observance of religion considering his father’s occupation as a minister, with a share of “rigid thinking” passed down according to Miller and a parenting style split between dourness and solicitous warmth shown in the contents of “High Bridge.”
“Grover carried that forward with him,” Miller said. “He became pretty ardent that women had their place and that voting was not part of that picture from his point of view.”
Despite their differences, Miller said Gage and Cleveland both maintained “solid moral cores” rooted in honesty, respectful treatment of other people, and directness.
Though they had both lived in Fayetteville at the same time, Miller makes the guess judging by that overlapping window that Gage and Cleveland would nonetheless not have known each other well. The prologue of “High Bridge,” however, does touch on the actual instance of the two meeting at the Executive Mansion, now known as the White House, when the leadership of the National Woman Suffrage Association was invited to the premises.
The book’s narrative settles into a re-creation of a 19th century world before the advent of electricity and cars when words like “balderdash” were all the rage.
“I really wanted to try and evoke the time because I don’t know how easy it is for people to be able to put themselves back 150 or 170 years and have a sense of what it’s like,” Miller said.
The idea for the book came to Miller, who lived in an unincorporated area between Fayetteville and Manlius from 2000 to 2013, as he was walking around Fayetteville gandering at its historic signs. He said he began conducting research for the novel more regularly around the time he moved away, still appreciative of its rich history as it related to local happenings and national implications.
“Almost everywhere you turn, there’s something that’s anchored to things that went on in the past that are so foundational for who we are and where we are,” said Miller, who now resides in Northampton, Massachusetts. “I would argue that we’re still wrestling with a lot of the issues that they wrestled with then.”
In the process of writing “High Bridge,” Miller relied on primary sources, biographies, contact with director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation Sally Roesch Wagner, maps of Gage’s birthplace of Cicero, and resources from the Fayetteville Free Library, the Onondaga Historical Association, the Library of Congress and the Cicero Historical Society.
The back appendix of the novel contains timelines running through the lives of both Gage and Cleveland as well as their family trees and a selection of their quotes.
The launch for “High Bridge” took place on March 23 at the Fayetteville library on Orchard Street in the form of a talk with fellow author Peter Svenson. That date was chosen because it lands in between the birthdays of Cleveland and Gage.
For more information about the novel and Miller’s upcoming presentations, visit michaelmillerbooks.com.
