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Susan Craft once stood in the cupola atop the Mills Building of the S.C. State Hospital on Bull Street and looked out at the commanding view of Columbia.
As she surveyed the cityscape and remembered that the Mills Building was built in 1822, she wondered what life was like for people who worked at the hospital during the Civil War.
Now, thanks to Craft's love of history, readers of her new book, A Perfect Tempest, will have a good idea.
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Craft also created the painting and the book cover design for A Perfect Tempest.
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The recently published historical novel tells the story of heroine Deborah Wingard, the daughter of a physician at what was once known as the S.C. Lunatic Asylum, whose courage and bravery are forged in the hardship of war.
"One of the major themes of the book is that war makes heroes out of ordinary people who have to survive and manage their lives in the middle of a crisis," said Craft, an administrative assistant with the departments of continuing and experiential education at the College of Pharmacy who wrote the book during an earlier career as an assistant director of communications with the S.C. Department of Mental Health.
Even though the book has a romance in it, it is categorized as historical fiction because history drives the story, starting from the time of just before Sherman's occupation of Columbia in February 1865.
Craft spent years researching the book in places like the South Caroliniana Library and the state archives. She prides herself on the historical accuracy of the narrative, which follows Wingard as she becomes a nurse at the hospital and then is drawn into a spy ring that frees a Union doctor being held as a prisoner of war on the hospital's grounds.
"I love history, love reading history, love reading books, love going through archives," said Craft, who described the book as a labor of love she embarked on after realizing the hospital's history could provide the perfect backdrop for a novel. "I always said if I never got the book published, just doing the research and meeting the people I've met over the years to work on it would be worth it."
Though she received positive responses from publishing houses, a recurring comment was that the manuscript was too regional for mass-market appeal. So Craft published the book herself with iUniverse.
Self publishing has been a satisfying experience, she said, including the full editorial review of the manuscript by the publisher and the help she got from her writers' support group, the Inkplots, 10 Columbia area writers who critiqued the book and assisted with checking the page proofs.
A Perfect Tempest is available for $14.95 through Columbia area booksellers and online from Barnes and Noble, Books A Million, iUniverse, and Amazon.com. Craft also is selling the book herself through local book signings and appearances.
Even though she jokes that her goal has only been "to sell more copies than I have relatives," she has almost sold enough to break even on her investment. She's also been told that if the book sells more than 500 copies in its iUniverse version it could become a commercially published title. And the principal of a book-to-film company liked the story so much she wants to pitch it to a filmmaker.
But writing and publishing have never been about money for Craft. "I wanted to have something in my hands for all those years of work and the effort my family expended to help me and put up with my time away from them while I was working on it," she said.
"Writing is more than a hobby for me. It's a passion, something I've always felt the need to do that adds another dimension to my life."
Craft is at work on a second novel about three couples whose marriages survive the worst problems that can afflict matrimony, and a book set in Charleston about the Revolutionary War.
"I enjoy the whole idea of writing," said Craft. "If you have that bug, you're driven to do it, even if you have a fulltime job and a family."
6/06
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Author Susan Craft, a staff member in the College of Pharmacy
