I heard the jar before I saw it, and it led me to the Museum.

The antique stoneware jar had tumbled off a table in the home of a New England family. The jar was imagined. The family was fictional. The scene would become a pivotal one in my novel Good Dirt. In my mind, the jar was a beloved heirloom. It had the potential to tell the reader much about my story’s protagonist, but I needed to do my research to answer key questions about the object.

What kind of ceramic jar would be so important to a prosperous African American family that its members would give it a nickname, pass stories about it from one generation to the next, and mourn its loss after it had crashed to the floor of their coastal Connecticut home? The family’s wealth would have made it possible to own any number of precious objects, but I knew that the jar’s value lay in the deeply emotional link it provided to each character’s sense of identity and, more broadly, to their ideas of America.

I began my research in Europe, living under lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic. My inquiry relied heavily on whatever articles and photographs I was able to access online from libraries, museums, and academic institutions. Two years later, I found myself standing in a gallery at the MFA, surrounded by stoneware produced by enslaved people in the Edgefield district of South Carolina, and contemporary artwork inspired by that stoneware.

The exhibition, “Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina,” had jars similar to the family heirloom I imagined. In particular, it included vessels crafted in the mid-19th century by Dave, later David Drake, a skilled craftsman who, for much of his life, produced pottery at the wheel while held in bondage. Dave signed and dated his storage jars, and sometimes inscribed entire phrases and poems into their surfaces.

At that time, enslaved people were forbidden from learning to read and write. Any show of literacy could have cost them their lives.

The jar in Good Dirt is different in at least one respect from the ceramics I saw in “Hear Me Now,” but it would not have taken shape at all without the stories of those long-ago enslaved potters. In my novel, the jar holds a secret message: that message, and the literacy it demonstrates, puts people at risk but, ultimately, it also helps them move forward with resilience and pride.

Walking through the MFA on my way to see “Hear Me Now,” I passed a late 18th-century painting by John Singleton Copley, Watson and the Shark. Like one of the storage jars crafted by Dave, the painting will be part of the Museum’s reinstallation of its first-floor Art of the Americas galleries, opening in time for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. As with the pottery in “Hear Me Now,” coming face to face with the painting held special meaning for me as a storyteller.

Copley based the painting on a true account of a shark attack in Havana Harbor in 1749. Though there are various reasons to appreciate the vivid portrayal of nine men in a boat trying to rescue a wounded teenager, I was most impressed by one detail, namely, the presence of a Black man in the boat. It is not clear if he is from the Americas, Europe, or Africa, but the man’s African origins are evident.

Much of my research for Good Dirt focused on Black seafarers in the Americas during the 19th century, both enslaved and free, and the novel includes historical reference to their presence on ships and boats.

Enslaved people powered the American economy through a variety of labor. Some of their tasks, like pottery and sailing, may be difficult for us to imagine today because they were not as common as others. But historical accounts and records show evidence of this work. In the same way, displays of art and crafts can augment our awareness of stories from the past and expand our view of the ways people worked and otherwise lived.

I began my professional life as a journalist. Nonetheless, I do not consider myself a research-driven artist. When I write fiction, I tend to write, first, from the gut. I start with an emotion, a question, an image, a sound. Then I take a step back from the page and ask myself, What is this? Where am I going with it? At the height of a pandemic, while living in Europe, I heard a jar crash to the floor in an imagined Connecticut home. And the sound of that jar splitting open brought me to the MFA.

I was writing a contemporary family drama, but this family had built its identity and vision for the future around a jar passed down through six generations. I crafted a fictional story on a foundation of documented, historical information. The people and the kinds of work they did may no longer exist, but they live on through conserved artifacts. I began the research to add plausibility to an imagined story. I came away learning much about little-known aspects of American history.

Literature and artwork have the potential to bring unsung stories to light. They also can resonate in ways that go beyond the historical record—ways that are human and personal. A story or an object can generate curiosity, encourage readers or visitors to learn more, and offer us a fuller picture of the American story.

Almost every day, people write to me about my novel. They comment on the family tragedy. They gnash their teeth at the romance gone wrong. They muse about the unlikely friendship that crops up between two women. But mostly, they ask me about the jar.