The historical events described in this story are true. In October of 1978, Idi Amin, the brutal despot who called himself the President of Uganda invaded Tanzania, leaving in his wake a wasted countryside and thousands of raped, tortured, and murdered civilians. Those who were not killed were captured and sold as slaves. If you go to Google Earth, you will see the ruins of a church standing by the Kagera River in Tanzania, only twenty miles from the Ugandan border, destroyed by Idi Amin’s army the night of October 31 to November 1, 1978. This place caught in this war became the inspiration for my story about how Sally Beth’s uncomplicated faith and love are tested.
Alice Auma and her army are historical. Although I did not make them up, I did take some literary license by placing them slightly out of their time. Alice was Ugandan and she did lead a band of soldiers called the Army of the Holy Spirits, but she actually did not come on the scene until 1986. Born in 1956, she would have been only twenty-two-years-old at the time of the Ugandan-Tanzanian war: young, but not too young to listen to spirits and lead an army after the fashion of Joan of Arc.
Alice channeled several spirits, especially one dead army officer called Lakwena. Because the Acholi believed Lakwena was a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Alice became the head of the Holy Spirit Movement. According to her biographer, anthropologist Heike Behrend, the movement appeared to be a blend of Orthodox Christianity, African witchcraft, and nature worship. I did not try to dress up Alice’s beliefs or actions to make her more “Christian,” nor did I point out flaws in her theology. I just let her stand as she stood in Uganda when she led the Army of the Holy Spirits across the war-torn landscape.
All of the information about Alice and her army mentioned in A Saint in Graceland are factual, including the most farfetched bits, such as the parts about “James Bond,” requiring new recruits to spit into a live chicken’s mouth, and the necessity of exactly two testicles, among other things. With such a character hovering in the wings, I couldn’t pass up telling her story. I like to think the few weeks of victory Alice enjoyed when she was twenty-two in this novel was just a prelude to the larger campaigns she led eight years later.
The character of Alethia Bagatui (and Sally Beth’s passion for helping children) was inspired by a living person. Katie Davis, a white, upper-middle class homecoming queen and class president, went to Uganda on a mission trip right after her high school graduation in 2006, and she is still there. She gave up her comfortable life, a college education, and the boy she had planned to marry to live in Uganda and formally adopt fourteen (at last count) little girls. She also founded and runs the Masese Feeding Outreach, a program that provides meals, medical care, and education to 1,600 children who might otherwise be forced to beg in the streets. In addition to all this, she began a vocational program to help adult women earn income to support their families by making jewelry that her foundation markets in the United States.
I decided to make Alethia of African descent with personal ties to the people of the region because the story of Katie’s journey from pampered prom queen to the mother and benefactor of Ugandan children is too extraordinary to be easily believed, especially in the historical context of this novel. Like Alice’s story, Katie’s is more fantastic than any fiction I could write. If you want to know more about her and the work she is doing, read her blog at katiedavis.amazima.org. Prepare your heart. This woman makes you realize what it really means to love and serve God.
It was emotionally difficult to research and write about the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), or female circumcision, as, I expect, it was difficult for you to read about it. But I knew early on that if I was going to describe the horrors that led to Sally Beth’s spiritual collapse, I could not leave out this important cultural practice.
FGM is still common in all African nations. Westerners have been vocal about the brutality of the tradition for a very long time, and Africans have found their objections condescending and insulting. The story about the Finnish woman who spoke out against it being circumcised and murdered in her own home is true.
There has been some progress, although it is heartbreakingly slow. In May, 2015, Nigeria became the 26th African nation to criminalize or discourage the practice, but such laws have been largely ignored, superseded by generations of ingrained tradition, and FGM is still common in many African nations. Unfortunately, even while attitudes are gradually changing in Africa as native women begin to lead in the battle against mutilation (see desertflower.org), FGM is gaining in popularity among immigrant populations worldwide, including Europe and the US. (see Newsweek, 2/6/15. “Female Genital Mutilation on the Rise in the U.S,” by Lucy Westcott). At present, there are an estimated 130 to 150 million victims of FGM around the globe. Activists like Sally Beth and Priscilla have their work cut out for them, but thankfully, there are thousands of men and women who are working tirelessly to end this horrific practice.