The past in present tense

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

The old literary adage, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” is often attributed to Mark Twain. It’s hard to confirm that, but it makes for a good story. At the very least, Twain also supposedly said, “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

Both old saws are particularly apt when applied to the historical fiction genre, as it blends real-life places, incidents and personalities from the past with the creative license of a contemporary author.

Writer Rick Reed has done just that with his novel The Last Conquerors, published in 2022 and centered on the life of Sebastian Velazco, a fictional character who leaves his home in Seville, Spain for the Western Hemisphere in 1572.

As a conquistador, Velazco journeys deep into the Indigenous lands — participating in and ultimately turning against the brutality and tyranny of the Spanish invaders. Though he prospers from the aggression, even doing his part to help overthrow the last independent Inca ruler, the real-life Tupac Amaru, Velazco’s transformation from a conqueror to a cohabitant with the Inca in post-Pizarro Peru provides the overarching narrative theme. His love affair and marriage with an Incan woman — whose past is more complicated than it appears — provides the critical early catalyst for his change of perspective. 

Layered throughout are events both suspenseful and adventurous, violent and mystical, real and fictitious.

“It’s pretty literal that he’s one of the last conquistadors and he doesn’t really want to be killing people,” said Reed, who published the novel under the nom de plume R.M. Reed. “He sees the value in the land versus the gold — and farming, and he finds a beautiful woman. He sees that there are other things that one can do well with.”

The world in which Velazco moves rarely sees things the way he does. Some characters are more sympathetic than others — a good-hearted viceroy (based on a real character) versus a wicked (fictional) governor — along with varying shades of moral gray displayed by persons ranging from Indigenous nobles to Spanish priests to thieves and, as Reed’s synopsis hints (no spoilers here), “perhaps even the Inca gods.”

It’s a fraught historical period to explore, with the legacy of the “conquest” still a matter of fierce debate in the Americas and beyond, and Latin American politics to the present day still rooted in those debates.

Reed said he didn’t really confront that notion directly, preferring to approach his characters on something like their own historical (or historical-fiction) terms.

“Not all these guys were bad. Some of them had a heart and some of them didn’t. Pizarro didn’t,” he said, adding later, “We like to think of ourselves that we try to do the right thing, but a lot of times it’s done wrong. I don’t think the Spaniards were really concerned about whether it looked like the right thing.”

Of greater interest for Reed was the research necessary to give historical heft to the small details that bring his vision of 16th-century Peru to life.

A Master’s degree holder and teacher of Spanish at the Monarch School in Sandpoint, Reed has spent a lifetime reading National Geographic “cover to cover” in both English and Spanish, taken a course in Latin-American history and visited Spain.

His exposure to that culture and past — combined with his academic research and writing skills — not only led to what he called “an epiphany” when the basic story of The Last Conquerors unfolded in his mind, but set him off on his research journey.

“My learning was really more active as I was writing; I’d think, ‘Wouldn’t it be neat to know about that?’ And with Google, it was at my fingertips,” he said. “The research is so much easier than it was.”

That effort is borne out by the little things that come together to make a believable historical setting, such as the Incas using soap made from agave — “No Spaniards would know about that,” he said — to the use of Toledo steel for Velazco’s ancestral sword. There’s also Reed’s description of the earthy smell of the sails on Spanish ships, due to their fabric being made of hemp at the time, and even the beer-like beverage chicha consumed by the Incas.

“People would chew it and spit it and chew it and spit it and chew it and spit it until it ferments,” Reed said.

He made sure to incorporate the complexity of Inca society and beliefs — “How the Incas thought of the condor as what people carried off to the spirit world, the jaguar being a symbol of power, their reverence for their ancestors,” he said.

Finally, there was the form in which Reed decided to phrase his narrative — unlike the often passive voice of academic writing, he chose to put everything in the present tense, providing a sense of urgency to the events he portrays.

“It gave me so much more license for creativity,” he said.

The Last Conquerors, by R.M. Reed, is available for $22 at Miller’s Country Store, Vanderford’s and the Corner Book Store in Sandpoint; Bonners Books in Bonners Ferry; The Well-Read Moose in Coeur d’Alene; and 2nd Look Books and Auntie’s Bookstore in Spokane. Reed also hosts a Spanish language gathering at Evans Brothers Coffee on Wednesdays at 2 p.m., where he offers books for sale.