Henry David Thoreau and "COVID Disobedience"

Blazing Reader,

For the last few months, I've been working on a novella. Originally, it was set entirely in March 2020, a few months before the events that take place in my novel, Much Ado About Corona, in the Greater Sudbury Region of Northern Ontario.

Or, at least, it was.

As I kept on writing and rewriting, the story unfolded unexpectedly (as they often, magically, do). Now, half of the story takes place on July 1846, in Concord, Massachusetts with my retelling of the arrest of Henry David Thoreau.

As described in his famous essay, Civil Disobedience, Thoreau was arrested for refusing to pay his taxes. In fact, he was six years behind and owed a whopping $9. Even in today's money, it wasn't much. Yes, Thoreau was a frugal man, but it wasn't out of financial hardship that he refused to participate in the tax system. It was because he didn't want his money to be used to fund the capture of runaway slaves. (Even though Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1780, it still sent "lost property" back to the Southern States.)

Each chapter of the novella now alternates between the story of Henry Thoreau's arrest in 1846 and the story of Stefanie Müller risking arrest to rescue an eight-year-old girl from Covid quarantine in 2020.

The working title is COVID Disobedience — a play on Thoreau's famous essay, Civil Disobedience.

The novella still needs at least two months of rewrites before I can publish it. Until then, if you haven't yet read Henry David Thoreau's historical essay, Civil Disobedience, you can support my work by purchasing a copy through my Blazing Pine Cone Shop.

John C.A. Manley

PS And if you haven't read Much Ado About Corona yet, you won't be put under arrest. Fortunately, that's not my style. But I will inform you that you are missing out on what one reader calls a "love story, with a touch of tragedy and mysticism" that is a "pleasure from cover to cover." Check out his full review here.

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.