Mark R. Giesser was born in Texas; he has a photo of himself standing in front of the Alamo as a child. This personal connection to the Lone Star State is just one source of inspiration for his latest publication. Set in 1835-1836, The Wife in Watercolours offers a perspective on the history of the Southwest that’s a bit different from the familiar mythology of this region. Kirkus Reviews has this to say about the book: “The brutality of war meets the theater of the absurd in this historical novel set in Texas during its rebellion against Mexico.”
That reference to the theater is perfectly apt. Now a London-based playwright, director, and producer, Giesser has visited this time and place before in his work. As he explains it, he was doing research for a piece of prose fiction when he started seeing the action taking place on stage rather than on the page. This resulted in the play Good Morning, Alamo! which had a successful run in London in 2013. The Wife in Watercolours is, the author explains, essentially a novelization of the play.
In the United States, the Texas Revolution is typically presented through, as Giesser puts it, “wonderful tales of courage and heroism and a fight against oppression.” But, he points out, this conflict looks different from a Mexican perspective. “One way of looking at the Texas Revolution is that the Americans are essentially illegal immigrants, trying to take over a big piece of Mexico. So what happens if you start looking at the story from another point of view? What happens if someone on the other side has a story that conflicts with yours? What do these stories mean in an era when we’re building new walls on the Mexican border? When we’re trying to figure out who we’re going to let in?” His point is that the stories we tell ourselves about our national past shape the country we are today.
Although it raises questions about serious matters, The Wife in Watercolours is not a dry treatise on political science. It’s a satire, and Giesser uses farce and larger-than-life characters to challenge readers to take a fresh look at perceived ideas. One of those larger-than-life characters is the folk icon—and fearless frontiersman or brutal colonizer, depending on your perspective—Davy Crockett. This legendary figure solves a technical problem Giesser encountered as he was translating a work written for the stage into a novel. “The play was a dramatic story with satirical breakout scenes, and I was having a devil of a time trying to find a prose equivalent for this theatrical device.” Then Giesser landed on the idea of Crockett speaking directly to the reader as he prepares to die at the Battle of the Alamo:
Anyway, for those of you who haven’t read my own life story, or can’t read, I can sum it all up pretty quick. Got born. Married Polly. Had some kids. Enlisted with the Second Regiment of Volunteer Mounted Rifleman to help out old Andy Jackson as he kicked the living crap out of the Creek nation. Spent more time hunting to feed the boys than actually fighting Creeks, but I done enough to go home to Polly and the kids a hero. Of some sort.
Polly died. Married me a widow and had more kids. Become a justice of the peace and a lieutenant colonel of the Tennessee Militia. That’s right, fellow citizens. I really was a colonel, and in Tennessee, was always is. Not that it matters all that much now, except to my boys standing with me to defend the low wall in front of the church. Travis give us the weak spot, most likely on account of all the bullshit that still ain’t been cleared about how I’m the bravest, fightinest…well, you get the point. An honor, I’m sure. I’d bet he reckoned the Mexicans have heard it, too, and I’m sure that’s true among those that can read. So maybe they’re supposed to see me and pull up short at the sight. After all, don’t want to mess with a man who killed him a ba’ar at the age of three. Not even Antonio López de Santa Anna’s supposed to have done that.
While one might expect to encounter Davy Crockett in a novel set during the Texas Revolution, Giesser’s other main characters are bit more surprising. Harry Birchfield was a cobbler back in London. Land agents persuaded him that a working man could get rich growing cotton in Texas. Actually claiming the land he’s been promised proves to be harder than he expected, though, and he winds up conscripted by an eccentric New Yorker fighting with Texans.
Charlotte Vernon is also drafted—to represent Mexico’s glorious victory on a vast canvas. When asked what inspired him to drop a lady painter from Surrey right into the middle of the Texas Revolution, Giesser related how he found the model for this protagonist. “I was reading about British immigration to the United States in the 19th century, and there was this little story about a woman who traveled to the United States on holiday and had such a horrible time on the ship that when she set foot in the States, [she] vowed never to return because she could not tolerate another Atlantic crossing. I started wondering what would happen to a genteel woman on her own in a new country.”
Harry, on the other hand, represents a more universal immigrant experience: someone who discovers that making his fortune in the New World isn’t any easier than it was making it in the Old World. Imagining how Charlotte and Harry might fare when they end up on opposing sides of the same war turned into the plot that drives both the play and the novel.
The Wife in Watercolours is not Giesser’s first work of historical fiction. He’s also written a series of detective novels set in 19th-century London—the most recent of which is A Fish of Some Importance (2019)—and at the moment, he’s keeping an eye out for intriguing little footnotes to explore and expand upon.
Jessica Jernigan is a writer and editor who lives and works in the Midwest.
