KINGSTON, Okla . A search for an ancestor in her family tree has led Kingstonarea educator Kendra Webb somewhere she never expected: to the publication of her first novel.
Webb is the author of Acumo: Between the River and the Record, a historical fiction novel inspired by her genealogy research and the story of an ancestor named Acumo.
The project did not begin with plans to write a book.
Webb was researching her family history when she became fascinated with the pieces of Acumo’s story that had survived through family accounts and historical records. Those pieces led to more research, but they also led to questions that documents could not answer.
Who was Acumo beyond a name recorded in a family tree? What did she love and fear? What did home mean to her? How did the enormous historical events happening around her affect the ordinary moments of her life?
Eventually,Webbrealized that historical fiction could give her a way to explore those questions while still being clear about the difference between documented history and imagination.
“Some stories wait generations to be told,” Webb said. “I kept finding myself thinking about Acumo not just as an ancestor, but as a woman who had a whole life that could never fit into the few lines we might find in a historical record. I wanted to know her.”
Family accounts identify Acumo as a Cherokee ancestor and connect her to the family of the Cherokee leader Doublehead. Webb’s research followed Acumo’s marriage to John Melton and the family line through their son, Merida Melton.
The research also taught Webb one of genealogy’s most important lessons: family tradition and surviving documentation do not always agree.
Instead of filling those gaps and presenting them as fact, Webb decided to make the uncertainty itself part of the story.
That idea eventually provided the novel with its title.
BetweentheRiverandthe Record refers to the space between a life as it was actually lived and the small portion of that life that survives in written history.
“The records matter tremendously tome,”Webbsaid. “I don’t want to turn family lore into fact just because I want it to be true. But I also began thinking about how much of a person’s life is never recorded at all. Historical fiction gave me a place to explore that space.”
Webb’s interest in preserving stories is closely connected to her career in education. She works as a coordinator at Virtual Preparatory Academy of OklahomaservingOklahoma students in several areas, including English language learners, gifted and talented students, and students with disabilities.
She is also a wife, mother of five and grandmother of three, making the idea of one generation passing its stories to the next particularly meaningful to her.
Writing Acumo became both a creative project and a family one.
After months spent researching, writing and revising, Webb published the novel through Barnes & NoblePress.Shehassincebegun selling copies locally and experiencing another first: signing books for readers.
“That may be the strangest and sweetest part,” Webb said. “Someone handed me a copy and asked me to sign it, and I had this moment of realizing that this thing that had lived in my head and on my computer was now a real book in someone else’s hands.”
Webb recently donated a copy of Acumo to the Madill library so the story would also be available in the community she calls home.
ForWebb,seeingthenovel there brought the project full circle. What began as an attempt to recover one woman’s story from the past had become something that could now be discovered by another reader.
She hopes the book does more than introduce readers to Acumo. She hopes it makes them curious about the people in their own family trees.
“Ask the questions while you still have someone to ask,” Webb said. “Write down the stories. Put names on the backsofthephotographs.Ask yourgrandparentswhatthey remember.Thereareextraordinary lives hiding inside ordinary family histories.”
For Webb, one of those lives began with a name: Acumo.
Now that name is also on the cover of a book.
About the Book
Acumo:BetweentheRiver and the Record is a historical fiction novel by Kendra Webb inspired by her family history and genealogical research. The novel combines historical research with imagined scenes and characters to explore the human experiences that can exist beyond the surviving written record.
About the Author
Kendra Webb is an Oklahoma educator, wife, mother andgrandmotherwholivesin the Kingston area. Her longtime interests in education, genealogy, family history and storytelling came together in her first historical fiction novel, Acumo: Between the River and the Record.