For the dozen or so fans of the first novel, Bella should be posting the second novel, as he gets time. It's complete, so there's no danger of anyone being left hanging.
For those looking for a short "cut and run" story, this isn't it. No steamy sex scenes, no drawn out erotic castration scenes. Sorry. Our heroes are eunuchs, of course, and there's plots running everywhere. The issue of racism at the beginning of the 20th Century is addressed, and some slurs, violence, and the occasional murder take place. Naturally, minor-aged boys are castrated.
The novel, like the first, deals with a Depression Era orphanage for boys, set 'somewhere' in Appalachia, USA, where the home's policy is to automatically castrate any new charges placed in their care. Historically, given the Eugenics Laws of the early 20th Century, as well as (Harry) Laughlin's Law, this is pretty realistic. As Jesus has said, it's just a hair's breadth away from a Reality that could very well have been.
There are 31 chapters, some pushing the 10k word mark. There's also over 50 MB of notes (text and some pics) which won't be included, for historical accuracy. So yes, I did my homework!
I've already read it beginning to end -- first while you were writing it, and then end to end in one sitting when it was all done. Book I was excellent, and if possible, I think II is better. Highly recommend.
Like Kristoff, I was fortunate to be able to read and comment on the first draft of The Boys of Blue Creek, Book 2. Its a great and compelling novel. Its better written than most of the fiction published today, although the castration theme would probably prevent it ever becoming popular for a general audience.
The Boys of Blue Creek fits a genre that began as far back as the Romans, or even earlier. Alternate, or counterfactual, history dates at least from Livys Ab Urbe Condita Libri (History of Rome), written between 27 and 9 BCE. In book IX, sections 17-19, Livy contemplated an alternative 4th century BCE in which Alexander the Great had survived to attack Rome. (Alexander, of course, lost in a Roman authored story.) A more recent and more familiar example of the genre is Philip K. Dicks The Man in the High Castle, a counterfactual history where the Nazis and Japanese won World War II and divided and occupied the United States. There are a great many other works in the genre, where minor twists in history lead to a very different present or to very different futures. There are also speculative histories, taking off from past or present conditions and projecting them into a frequently dystopian future, such as Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale.
The Boys of Blue Creek builds on eugenic laws and practices that were found in many parts of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. The modern eugenics movement began in England in the 1880s as an attempt to improve the genetic quality of the human population by selective breeding. It quickly took root in the United States in the 1890s, gaining both public support and considerable funding from donors. It became a recognized academic discipline at many colleges and universities with hundreds of courses and thousands of students.
On the model of animal domestication and breeding, eugenics was understood to include both the encouragement of procreation by the best and fittest and prevention of procreation by those deemed to have less desirable characteristics. The first Better Baby contest was held in 1908, and by the 1920s there were frequent judgings of babies at state and county fairs alongside the judging of cattle, sheep, and hogs. Beginning in 1920 there were Fitter Families contests, with families graded as having Grade A individuals and receiving ribbons and medals, just like the livestock being judged at the fair.
For those individuals at the other end of the grading scale, there began to be efforts to sterilize the unfit. One early publication toward this effort was Everett Floods article Notes on the Castration of Idiot Children (1899: American Journal of Psychology). Flood reported the positive effect of castration on 26 boys, primarily for treating epilepsy and excessive masturbation. Only two of the boys were noted as having exhibited low intelligence and masturbation was noted as a major reason for the castration of 25 of the 26 boys.
In 1907 Indiana passed the first state legislation mandating sterilization for some types of individuals in state custody. Such laws were eventually passed and enforced in a majority of other states. In 1922 Harry Laughlin, the director of the Eugenics Record Office, published model legislation which he proposed be adopted by all states. Only parts of it were widely adopted, however. Laughlin proposed that socially inadequate persons be sterilized to prevent their procreation. He suggested that local determination be made for either castration or vasectomy for boys and either ovariotomy or tubal ligation for girls. In the early years, at least, it was primarily castration for boys and tubal ligation for girls. In the early years in Oregon, for example, only one boy received a vasectomy. All of the rest were castrated. The last eugenic castration that I know of in Oregon took place in the 1980s. In the early years, it was primarily boys who were sterilized. By the mid 1930s, a slight majority sterilized were girls. Sterilizations declined in the 1950s and 1960s, although laws were still on the books as late as 2014 in California and sterilizations were carried out at least as late as 2010.
Laughlins model legislation specifically included orphans among the socially inadequate classes eligible to be castrated or otherwise sterilized. The Blue Creek Home for Foundling Boys followed through with this proposed law and, in the years covered by most of the story, sterilized by castration all of the orphans it housed. When the head of the home, Dr. Michael Carver, quotes Henry Ford or John Harvey Kellogg (of Battle Creek fame) or others, the quotations are accurate for those strong supporters of the eugenics movement.
What you read in the story is one possible and logical continuation of a cultural movement that was underway at the time of the story. Memory of it has largely been forgotten or suppressed, but it was very real at the time. Tens of thousands of boys and girls were sterilized in the United States for eugenic reasons. What we know about the life expectancy of men castrated before puberty is largely based on research into the hundreds of boys castrated in Kansas. Research into those castrated by state institutions demonstrated the hormonal basis for some of Aristotles observations on eunuchs in the Greek realm.
Some, today, feel that modern genetics and genomics research and that in vitro fertilization and gestational surrogacy portend a return of eugenic planning. While we are unlikely to begin castrating large numbers of boys as practiced in Blue Creek, we may someday find more common the careful selection of sperm and egg donors for producing modern better babies and fitter families. The original goals of the eugenics movement may be attained through modern methods.
Thank you for doing this, Paolo. As others have said, your writing is better than a lot of commercial authors, at least to me, and it's not primarily for the castration or erotic elements.
I very much enjoyed the first book. Having grown up in boarding school, the adventure felt quite real. Thank you.
Jesus, were there any other countries that practiced eugenics? Apart from the obvious efforts by Hitler, were there big open movements for it elsewhere in Europe?
gellyfregy (imported) wrote: Wed May 20, 2020 4:35 am
Thank you for doing this, Paolo. As others have said, your writing is better than a lot of commercial authors, at least to me, and it's not primarily for the castration or erotic elements.
I'm looking forward to seeing it.
Thanks!
It was something to occupy all my free time over the past year.
And yes, I'm fishing for compliments! 
I read the first book and enjoyed it. I am with Kristoff.