Blending fiction into history

E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime (1975) could be a history book that reads like a novel or a novel that reads like a history book. That it is actually the latter we know because it tells us that on the cover. Doctorow blends fact and fiction as well as any historical novelist, a plot coming into form only gradually. Historical figures like Harry Houdini, J.P. Morgan, Emma Goldman, Henry Ford, Booker T. Washington, Evelyn Nesbitt and Sigmund Freud are as much characters as the two families, one black and one white, that eventually take over the story.

The book is narrated by someone who is just a boy when all this takes place, and he identifies members of his family only as Father, Mother and Mother's Younger Brother. He does not give a name even to himself.

An elegant black musician named Coalhouse Walker comes each week to their house to try to convince their maid to marry him. They already have a baby boy. Sarah finally agrees to the marriage, then tragedy strikes. Coalhouse is persecuted by members of a fire department, who destroy his new Model T. He insists they restore it to its original condition, even though as a black man he has virtually no power.

Meanwhile Sarah is killed by the police when she is only trying to summon help, and Mother takes over the care of her child, which distances her from Father. In desperation, Coalhouse turns violent, backed up by several young black men and even Mother's Younger Brother, who after being rejected by Evelyn Nesbitt is ready to use his talent with explosives for Coalhouse's hopeless cause.

The period of history is just before the First World War, and Doctorow gives us the flavor of that time. This may be his best known novel, although it is hardly his best.