I'm getting a kick out of my search for an agent or publisher, mainly because I'd originally intended Hannah's Valley to be what is loosely called historical fiction.
The second part is true. It's a fiction.
How historical is it?
Well, it's in the past and could have happened.
So that's pretty much the genre, defined.
Most agents who allude to wanting historical fiction have been so far pretty vague about what that includes. Naturally, we want to know: How old does it have to be before it's historical? The standard notion is that it somehow needs to be no newer than the 19th century. That's important because of the morals, the dress code and of course, the regal settings. So 'historical' is an excuse to embellish location, location, location. If it ain't in the palace, it's not very interesting.
So if you wrote about a Navy ship off the coast of Honduras from 2001, would that be historical?
A yarn about the days just after 9/11 would scarcely be historical to me since it's generally available by clicking a Google search.
Hell, almost everything is generally available that way.
Still, are we talking ... oh, the time of Jesus or the time of Jimmy?
Does historical fiction, as presented in novel form, just look like something you scraped up by doing a few Wikipedia searches?
Hannah's Valley is as accurate historically as I want it to be. There are no motorboats in the river because it's 1866. They didn't even have AA batteries for their flashlights.
But the question about whether a woman wore a bonnet or a floppy hat would depend on one's interpretation of the fashion of the day. How they talked is kind of important, and their education level was as we might expect it to be.
But it's not historical. It's just set in another time. It's a novel, and it's a story about people. Nobody got gunned down. Well, sorry ... yes, one guy did get gunned down. But he was an asshole.
I can't prove Hannah's Valley didn't happen, but neither can you.
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