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Interiors of a Storyteller

Stephanie Sabbe’s Interiors of a Storyteller weaves memoir with interior design and is recommended for Southerners, designers and fans of storytelling of all stripes.
Stephanie Sabbe’s Interiors of a Storyteller weaves memoir with interior design and is recommended for Southerners, designers and fans of storytelling of all stripes.
NonfictionHistory

In Blood, Flowers Bloom

American World War II soldiers collected souvenirs from their dead opponents. In Blood, Flowers Bloom tells how those objects are being returned.
American World War II soldiers collected souvenirs from their dead opponents. In Blood, Flowers Bloom tells how those objects are being returned.
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Joseph Luzzi

Dante scholar Joseph Luzzi recounts his immigrant childhood and his complicated relationship with his parents’ homeland in a captivating new memoir, My Two Italies.
NonfictionMemoir

Caitlin Doughty

Interview by Alden Mudge

The voice behind the popular web series “Ask a Mortician” exposes the grisly, hilarious details of working in a crematorium—and argues that everyone needs to be more closely connected to the realities of death.

Your book is often vividly gruesome—and just as often very funny. What do you think is the source of your “gallows humor”?
My parents are both very clever people. I grew up around humor. It just made sense to apply it to conversations about death and mortality. Especially since these heavy topics can often be easier to take in if they’re delivered with a lighter touch.

You write that the day-to-day realities of working in a crematorium “were more savage than I had anticipated.” What surprised you most in your first days at the crematory?
The bodies were savage, in the sense that I had never seen so many corpses in one place. But the real savagery was that the corpses were essentially abandoned. Our funeral home came to pick them up and take them away from their families and store them in a giant freezer. I was the only person there when the bodies were cremated. Most people have no idea they can be much more involved in the death care of the people they love.

Your obsession with death began when you were 8 years old and saw a child plunge from an escalator in a shopping mall. Working in the mortuary seems to have brought some resolution to your obsession. Was writing the book also cathartic in some way?
Absolutely. Part of writing the book was to let other people know that we’re all obsessed with death, to a degree. Death is the human condition, and it’s perfectly OK to be fascinated by it, perfectly OK to want information about what goes on behind the scenes. It’s not morbid, or deviant, or wrong. In a way, writing the book helped me to fully embrace that idea as well.

You’re critical of the modern American funeral industry. But you are also critical of Jessica Mitford’s landmark exposé of funeral home practices, The American Way of Death (1963). What’s your beef with Mitford’s book?
I try to make it clear that I have a great deal of respect for what Mitford did. However, I think she was so focused on subverting the old men of the traditional funeral industry that the book ended up being pro-direct cremation. Direct cremation (cremation with no services of any kind) is the cheapest alternative, but it doesn’t allow for something I believe we need, which is to care for and interact with our dead bodies. To have the body just disappear can hurt the grieving process.

You’re on a kind of mission in Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Why is it so important that people have a closer connection with death?
I am on a mission! I would never claim to be an objective reporter. Death affects everything we do as humans, and we’re much healthier when we understand this. Other than television and film, we never see death any more, it’s not a part of our daily lives. We view this as “progress” but I don’t believe it is. We need the reality of death to remind us that we are not immortal, and our actions have real consequences.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

 

The voice behind the popular web series “Ask a Mortician” exposes the grisly, hilarious details of working in a crematorium—and argues that everyone needs to be more closely connected to the realities of death.

Richard Blanco

Inaugural poet Richard Blanco talks about his hilarious and moving new memoir, The Prince of los Cocuyos.

NonfictionWomen's HistoryHistory

Karen Abbot

Interview by Lily McLemore

During Nashville's Southern Festival of Books, Karen Abbot was able to sit down and chat with us about Liar, Temptress, Solider, Spy, a book that details the lives of four women who bucked societal convention, risked their lives and became spies during the Civil War. 

What initially inspired you to tackle such a little known topic in American history?
I was born and raised in Philadelphia, and I moved to Atlanta in 2001. And I was really struck by the fact that they’re still fighting this war down there. It really sort of seeps into life and daily conversation in a way it never does up North. I was just shocked by the Confederate flags on the lawns and the jokes about the “War of Northern Aggression.” It was all sort of driven home for me one day when I was stuck in traffic on 400—if you’ve ever been to Atlanta you know what I’m talking about—and I was behind a pick-up truck with a bumper sticker that said “Don’t blame me, I voted for Jefferson Davis.” (Who was, of course, the president of the Confederacy). I was just sitting there shocked, and I was behind this truck for hours. It just gave me the opportunity to really start thinking about the Civil War. Of course, my mind goes to, “Well, what were the women doing? And not just what were the women doing, but what were the bad women doing, the defiant women?” I wanted to find four women who lied, wheedled, avenged, flirted, shot, drank and spied their way through the Civil War. And I think I found four who do that.

What was one of the most surprising things that you discovered during your research into these women’s lives?
There were a couple of things. One has to do with Emma, who disguised herself as a man and enlisted in the Union army as Private Frank Thompson. I was wondering, how did she get away with this? There were about 400 women for both North and South who reportedly disguised themselves as men and enlisted. I came to the conclusion that [they were able to get away with it because] no one had any idea what a woman would look like wearing pants. They were so used to seeing women pushed and pulled into exaggerated shapes with their corsets, and the very idea of a woman in pants was so unfathomable, that even if she was right in front of them, they wouldn’t recognize it.

And also just the way that women were able to exploit their gender. Their gender was sort of a physical and psychological disguise. Physically, they’re hiding dispatches and weaponry in their hair and their hoop skirts. As a psychological disguise, if anyone accused them of treasonous behavior or espionage, their response was, “How dare you accuse me! It’s unbecoming as an officer and a gentleman, I’m a defenseless woman.” But of course, they were the farthest things from defenseless women. 

Do you have any all-time favorite historical figures?
Oh, god. So many. Where do I even start? I think the Everleigh sisters, who are the subjects of my first book. They were two madams who were sisters and ran a world-famous brothel in Chicago in the early 1900s. They were really fascinating and enigmatic characters. Also, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, the female pirates. I love them, too. They often dressed in drag, and people didn’t know they were women. I mean, obviously I have something about women dressing in drag.

What’s next for you?
Well, I’m thinking about a novel, which would be scary because it’s the first time I would attempt to do it. I wrote about her for the Smithsonian, and I can’t give up my love of history and facts, so it would be based in the history of Cassie Chadwick. She was a con-artist in Gilded Age New York, and she sort of lied herself into New York society. And then she disappears. There’s enough about her to do a blog post, but there’s not enough nonfiction sources to do a full book. So it would be the first time I would have to add flesh to the bones. I can’t decide yet if it’s going to be liberating or paralyzing. But I’m going to give it a shot!

Any authors you’re looking forward to seeing here at the Festival?
One of my friends, Joshilyn Jackson. I think everyone should go see her and Patti Callahan Henry. Also Ariel Lawhon; I love her book. Those were my three big ones. Oh, and Daniel Wallace, who wrote Big Fish!

Are you doing anything fun while in Nashville?
I was going to try and honky-tonk, but I should probably save that for when I don’t have to work the next day. Next time, though. 

(Author photo by Nick Barose)

During the Southern Festival of Books, Karen Abbot was able to sit down and chat with us about her latest book, Liar, Temptress, Solider, Spy, which details the lives of four women who bucked societal convention, risked their lives and became spies during the Civil War.

Kirstin Downey

After writing an award-winning biography of Frances Perkins (The Woman Behind the New Deal), former Washington Post reporter Kirstin Downey turns her attention to a woman with far broader influence: Isabella, the queen of Castile.
Memoir

Pamela Smith Hill

Interview by Julie Hale

More than 80 years ago, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote Pioneer Girl, an autobiography about growing up on the prairie. Editor Pamela Smith Hill explains why the book is finally being published and what it means for Little House fans.

What were Wilder’s intentions with this autobiography? Who was she writing for?
Wilder wrote Pioneer Girl for an adult audience, hoping for initial publication in a prominent national magazine of the period—The Saturday Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Journal or Country Gentleman. Such magazines published longer fiction and nonfiction in serial form. If Pioneer Girl had been published in one of these magazines, Wilder then hoped to sell Pioneer Girl to a book publisher.

Why is it being published now for the first time?
When I was conducting research for my biography, Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life, at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, I overheard an archivist field a call from a Wilder fan who wanted to order a photocopy of Pioneer Girl. I learned then that the Hoover receives dozens of calls like that every year. And once A Writer’s Life was published, readers began asking me how they could get a copy of Pioneer Girl. It occurred to me then that perhaps it was time for an annotated edition of Pioneer Girl, one that would place the various versions of the manuscript into context along with the Little House series itself. I took the idea to the South Dakota State Historical Society Press, and together we drafted a proposal for the Little House Heritage Trust, which holds the copyright to Wilder’s work. Fortunately, the Trust also thought the time was right for Pioneer Girl.

Pioneer Girl played a key role in the development of Wilder’s fiction. Can you tell us a bit about how she adapted the material for her Little House novels?
Wilder used Pioneer Girl as the foundation for her Little House books. It gave her an overall framework for the series, as well as narrative material. But she expanded episodes for her fiction, adding more details, eliminating others. In Pioneer Girl, for example, Wilder wrote one brief paragraph about the cabin her father built on the Osage Diminished Reserve in Kansas. In Little House on the Prairie, Wilder devoted two entire chapters to its construction and the family’s move inside. Then she added three more as Pa completed the house, adding doors, a fireplace, a roof and floor.

Careful readers will also notice similarities in phrasing and key passages. Sometimes Wilder lifted a sentence or paragraph from Pioneer Girl and placed it, with virtually no changes, into her fiction.

What can Pioneer Girl teach us about Wilder as a stylist? Do you think her background as a newspaper columnist influenced the manuscript?
Pioneer Girl was Wilder’s first attempt at writing a long-form narrative, and she hadn’t yet broken free from the constraints of writing short, concise, but descriptive newspaper columns. This is especially true in the first third of Pioneer Girl, where many episodes are roughly the length of a newspaper column. As I point out in the annotated edition, words are a luxury for a newspaper columnist and Wilder had learned to use them sparingly. But as she gained confidence in writing a longer narrative, she added more details and lingered over key episodes in her family’s life—the grasshopper plague, for example, and the Hard Winter of 1880-1881.

Wilder had a complex relationship with her daughter, the author Rose Wilder Lane, who served as her editor. Did they view one another as rivals? Was there a sense of competition between them?

Rose Wilder Lane was a very successful writer of fiction and nonfiction in the 1920s and ‘30s. By the time Wilder began work on Pioneer Girl, Lane had already successfully published fiction and nonfiction in prominent national magazines, and was the author of several books. Wilder was proud of her daughter’s accomplishments and mentioned Lane specifically in a column about distinguished Missourians. Furthermore, it’s clear from existing correspondence that Wilder valued and trusted her daughter’s editorial opinions.

But friction developed between the two in 1931. They were living in houses about half a mile apart, and saw each other almost every day. By then, Wilder had finished revisions on Little House In The Big Woods—her first novel—and it was scheduled for publication in 1932. She had worked closely with Lane on this project from beginning to end, and was writing the first draft for Farmer Boy.  Meanwhile, Lane was working on a novel she called “Courage”; its main characters were named Charles and Caroline—and their story came directly from the pages of Pioneer Girl. Lane apparently didn’t tell her mother about this project until it was published by The Saturday Evening Post as Let The Hurricane Roar in the fall of 1932, just months after Little House In The Big Woods had been released. For Wilder, this must have felt like a personal and professional betrayal. She must have also worried that a frontier novel from a prestigious author like Lane would undercut the success of Little House In The Big Woods.

Still, the two women worked through this crisis so that just five years later, both were again working on novels that drew on Pioneer Girl—Wilder on By The Shores Of Silver Lake and Lane on Free Land. But this time around, Wilder’s career as a novelist was secure and Lane openly discussed plans for her book with her mother. By then Lane had moved away, and the two women corresponded regularly about their works-in-progress. Even Wilder’s husband Almanzo chimed in with advice for Lane’s book.

Can you provide some background on the Pioneer Girl project? Who’s involved?
At this point, the Pioneer Girl project extends beyond the book to include an extensive web site and marketing materials. Several staffers at the South Dakota State Historical Society Press created content for the web site, gathered and supplemented research materials, fact-checked my annotations, supervised the development of maps for the book and web site, collected visual materials and developed the book’s index. I’m indebted to the entire staff for their tireless and inspired efforts.

What are some of the challenges you’ve faced in producing a comprehensive edition of Wilder’s autobiography?
The sheer size and scope of the project were sometimes overwhelming. There are four distinct versions of Pioneer Girl, all of them with significant variations. Although I used Wilder’s rough draft as a base text, I had to closely review all versions and comment on significant variations between them. Then I had to relate the various versions of Pioneer Girl to Wilder’s nine novels. It sometimes felt as if I was annotating 13 books, not one.

Furthermore, Pioneer Girl is highly concentrated and condensed. One sentence in a single version of Pioneer Girl might inspire five or six annotations on a variety of historical, geographical, literary, or scientific subjects. I wrote annotations on everything from scarlet fever to tuberculosis, Mr. Edwards to Nellie Oleson (and the girls who inspired her), panthers to pocket gophers, back combs to hoop skirts, treaty violations to railroad construction, singing schools to the American minstrel tradition. And while I worked to keep these annotations brief, I also wanted to make them interesting for readers and worthy of Wilder herself.

What surprised you, as an editor, about Pioneer Girl? Wilder’s narrative voice? Her structural approach?
When I first read Pioneer Girl closely, I was struck with the variations in story and character—that Jack in the Little House series is largely fictionalized or that the real Ingalls family shared their home with a young married couple during the Hard Winter. After working on this project, however, I came away with a new respect for Wilder’s understanding of her pioneer material and her ability to shape it into a meaningful narrative—first as nonfiction for adults, then in expanded form as fiction for young readers.

As a researcher, I was also struck with the accuracy of Wilder’s memory. With rare exception, I found historical footprints for virtually everyone Wilder remembered from her childhood, no matter how obscure.

Do you think fans of Wilder’s fiction will embrace Pioneer Girl?
I certainly hope they will. Pioneer Girl provides new insights into Wilder’s life and her development as an artist. I feel deeply honored to have been able to work on this project, and introduce it to a larger audience.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of Pioneer Girl.

A version of this article was originally published in the December 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

More than 80 years ago, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote Pioneer Girl, an autobiography about growing up on the prairie. Editor Pamela Smith Hill explains why the book is finally being published and what it means for Little House fans.

Andrew Maraniss

The author of a new book on Perry Wallace, who broke the color barrier in SEC basketball in the 1960s, explains why he decided to tell Wallace’s little-known story.
NonfictionParentingFamily & Relationships

Claude Knobler

Interview by Daniela Weil

Eleven years ago, Claude Knobler and his wife, who had two children, decided to adopt a 5-year-old boy from Ethiopia. In More Love, Less Panic: 7 Lessons I Learned About Life, Love, and Parenting After We Adopted Our Son from Ethiopia, Knobler explains how his struggle to turn the wild, silly, loud and “too optimistic” Nati into a quiet, neurotic Jew like himself forever changed the way he approached parenting.


Daniela and Lucy Weil (left) and Claude and Nati Knobler (right). Photos © Erik Zanker and Claude Knobler.

I have an adopted daughter from Ethiopia, too. She’s 8 and very much like Nati. She is loud, outgoing, silly, fearless and chronically happy. I sometimes try to tone her down, but, like you, I think I might be turning her into a “neurotic Jew.”
It's funny. I think with every kid you learn that they are who they are. It's just that when you adopt a child, you learn it a bit quicker. Our son Clay was exactly who he is from the day he was born, but it wasn't until we had our second child, our daughter Grace, that we really started to see that you can parent all you want, but your kids have their own personalities from day one.

Then . . . we adopted Nati, who was exuberant and giddy and silly, and we really realized that no matter what we did in the name of parenting, he was going to be exactly who he was going to be no matter what we did. There was just no way we could turn this silly Ethiopian 5-year-old who loved shouting and practical jokes into a young Woody Allen—which really makes parenting easier. Because you can just enjoy them for who they already are without worrying about whom you want to turn them into.

You can have long arguments with a toddler about how important it is for them to share their cookies, or you can get in the habit of being a generous, decent person in front of them.

The first lesson you learned is how it's better to influence, than to control. Let's talk about control.
Or about not having any! My wife and I were sent all these videotapes with 10-second snippets of kids saying their names. We had no idea how you could actually choose a child. And then we got this tiny photo of a little boy, and when we saw him on a video, we all just knew. Even when we were in charge, we had no more control than we did with our first two kids! The way we were given to go about “choosing” Nati was strange, but it really also was a good way to start seeing how little control we had.

As parents, it's so easy to make yourself and your child miserable “for their own good,” when really trying to control my kids is often just my way of dealing with the anxiety every parent feels. We love our kids so much that we can't help but be afraid about so many things in their lives. You can have long arguments with a toddler about how important it is for them to share their cookies, or you can get in the habit of being a generous, decent person in front of them. Most kids grow out of the worst kinds of selfishness on their own with time. Yelling at them and arguing with them won't make them better people. But they do watch what you do. Being able to let go of the idea that you can create a perfect child by being a perfect parent really can make your life and your child's life much gentler and happier.

I think when you're a biological parent, perhaps you have more expectations that your kid will become some version of you. Like they'll play the piano if you're a musician. When you adopt, I think you accept from the get-go that this child will be what he/she will be. For me, it's been clear that I cannot hold onto my expectations of who she will become. Maybe she will never go to college. Maybe she's going to end up being a mountain climber, or in one of those jackass videos (the Jewish mother's nightmare). But I've made my peace with that.
Yes! I think that's true, but again, I think that while adoption can speed it up, that's the process that every parent goes through. Talk to any parent of two children and before long they'll tell you how their second child had a personality of its own as soon as it was born. Really what I learned with Nati was that I didn't want any specific thing for any of my three kids. I just want them to be happy—though I do hope your daughter doesn't become a mountain climber or appears in a "Jackass" video. But only because mountain climbing scares me. As do "Jackass" videos.

Oh trust me, it scares the heck out of me too. I have a terrible phobia of heights, and she's a fearless climber. But I never wanted her to inherit my fears, so when she was little, I’d pretend I was totally OK with the crazy stuff she was doing in the playground. The other parents would walk up to me and say "Excuse me, do you think it's OK for your kid to be on the roof of the castle?"
But it was OK for her. Better to let your daughter climb than to shout at her because you're worried she'll fall off a mountain three decades from now. She didn't fall off that castle did she? Because if she did, I'm going to have to re-write my book.

LOL!
In your book, you talk a lot about nature versus nurture, and it seems like nature is the overwhelming force that shapes a child. Do you see the nurture element in Nati's personality?

That's such a great question. I do think that kids are like watching those old Polaroid pictures after they come out of the camera. The image is already there; you just have to wait for it to come into focus. That said, I don't think we changed who Nati was, but I do think that the cumulative effect of the life we've led has changed and shifted him. I haven't parented Nati into being more mature, but the traveling we've done, the conversations we've had and most of all, being a member of this family and seeing how we share our lives has, I know, helped him grow into the remarkable young man he's become.

The most helpful part of your book to me was the image of Nati's biological mom, who was dying of AIDS, whispering in his ear a final goodbye which you witnessed before leaving Ethiopia. It reminds me to let go.
I'm sure it goes without saying that being with Nati while his mother said goodbye to him was one of the most powerful experiences I'll ever have. It certainly made clear to me that there can be a purity to love. In our daily lives, love can come out in so many strange ways. I nag my kids because I love them. I worry about my family because of the love I feel for them. But at that moment, Nati's mother wasn't telling him anything for his future, or trying to teach him anything, she was just being with him, connecting with him and loving him as purely as anyone ever could. And yet, I do think it's important to remember that you can't always live in that kind of moment. If you never lose your temper with your kids, then you're probably not spending enough time with them. I think, for me, it's important to allow myself to feel all of it; the love, the frustrations, the fears without believing what those feelings sometimes tell me. It's OK to feel frustrated with your child's behavior without believing that voice that says, “How will she ever get a job as an adult when she'll always be this way?” It's possible to love your child with every fiber of your being and still step back and let them live their own lives as they mature.

A lot of what you say reminds me of the serenity prayer (God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference).
I did waste a lot of time as a parent trying to change what couldn't be changed and didn't need to be changed. I have a son in college now and once that happens you really do learn that while you think your kids are the entire book of your life, they're really just a chapter. They grow up and get their own lives, no matter how great a parent you are. And if you don't stop and enjoy all of their insanity and strangeness, then you've missed something wonderful. More love, less panic, because either way, whether you spend these years laughing or crying, they're going to be who they are and then they're going to go out into the world.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of this book.

Daniela Weil was born and raised in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and now lives in Houston with her daughter Lucy. Trained as a whale biologist, Weil is also a writer and illustrator whose work includes both children’s books and scientific illustrations. She is the creator of the web comic The World According to Lucy, which chronicles the experiences of an introverted adoptive mom parenting the fearless, free-spirited Lucy.

Eleven years ago, Claude Knobler and his wife, who had two children, decided to adopt a 5-year-old boy from Ethiopia. In More Love, Less Panic: 7 Lessons I learned About Life, Love, and Parenting After We Adopted Our Son from Ethiopia, Knobler explains how his struggle to turn the wild, silly, loud and “too optimistic” Nati into a quiet, neurotic Jew like himself forever changed the way he approached parenting.

Kevin Sessums

Quirky and raw, Kevin Sessums’ new memoir, I Left It on the Mountain, has all my favorite survival themes, plus cameos from Hugh Jackman and Courtney Love.
NonfictionHistory

Erik Larson

Interview by Alden Mudge

Adept at spinning historical events into gripping narratives, Erik Larson couldn't resist the storytelling potential of the Lusitania. 

You started reading about the Lusitania on a whim. What was the discovery that led you to decide to write a book about its last crossing?
What drew me, really, was not so much any single discovery, but rather my realization that the array of archival materials available on the subject—the palette of narrative elements—would allow me to tell the story in a way it had not yet been told. Telegrams, codebooks, love letters, the submarine commander’s war log, depositions, interrogation reports—all of it. For me it’s like heroin.

You’ve always been a remarkable researcher, finding amazing details to tell your story. What were your biggest research scores for Dead Wake?
The best elements are the telegrams to and from the German U-boat that were intercepted and decoded by the British. It was kind of thrilling to see the actual paper decodes in the National Archives of the UK. Probably my favorite moment was when one box yielded the immense German codebook that opened the way for the British to begin reading all of Germany’s naval communications, with Germany utterly unaware. This was the actual book—the one that, according to one account, was recovered from the arms of a drowned German sailor.

Do you have a personal favorite among the passengers whose lives you so vividly describe?
Well, I’d have to say I particularly like Dwight Harris. His account, first of all, was very detailed—that’s why I chose him. That’s also why I chose my other central characters; I swoon for detail. But what I loved most was the charm of Harris’ story, which he told in a letter to his mother. He was a young guy, and was clearly tickled to have gone through this nightmare and survived. I also very much liked Theodate Pope. She too left a detailed account. But I especially liked her backstory. She was one of the country’s first licensed female architects; she was an early feminist, at a time when the term itself was brand new; and she was deeply interested in exploring the mysteries of the mind and the possibility that there just might be an after-life. She was a character with a lot of nuance, and I love nuance. Heroes, frankly, are boring. 

In your telling, the Lusitania itself has a kind of personality, “conceived out of hubris and anxiety.” Are there things you learned about the ship that you found particularly compelling?
Everything. At heart I’m still a little boy. But, what I found most compelling was the sheer physical effort needed to power the ship—the volumes of coal, the innumerable furnaces, all fed by men with shovels, 24 hours a day. One of the amazing things about the ship, and the era’s emphasis on speed, was that with all boilers operating it could move at 25 knots, or nearly 30 miles an hour, and cross the Atlantic in five days—faster than a typical crossing on the Queen Mary 2 today. No wonder its passengers, and captain, believed it to be invulnerable. 

Walter Schwieger, who commanded the U-boat that sank the Lusitania, was beloved by his crew and ruthless in his willingness “to torpedo a liner full of civilians.” Was he typical of U-boat captains during World War I?
One of my favorite archival finds was a collection of interrogation reports done by British intelligence agents who had questioned captured German submariners. These reports convey a vivid sense of the dangers of U-boat life, and of the character of U-boat commanders. All U-boat captains were achingly young, with wide variation in personality. Some were ruthless, some chivalrous, some kind, some brutal. At least one was renowned for his inability to hit anything with a torpedo.

Your portrait of President Wilson in emotional turmoil was fascinating. To what extent do you think his grief over the loss of his first wife and his later passionate pursuit of Edith Galt colored his responses to international affairs? 
It’s hard to say. Clearly at the time the Lusitania was sunk, Wilson’s emotional self was in an uproar, thanks to his incredibly passionate love for Edith, and this doubtless contributed to a remark he made in a speech in Philadelphia that fell flat. Like dead. He said America was “too proud to fight,” which utterly missed the point, and drew ridicule from his opponents. 

Capt. William Thomas Turner, whom you wonderfully describe as a man “with the physique of a bank safe,” ends up being scapegoated by the British Admiralty for the Lusitania sinking. Seems pretty outrageous, doesn’t it?
Seems outrageous to me, but the Admiralty had ample incentive to try laying the blame entirely on Turner. Too many secrets needed protecting. 

Winston Churchill, as head of the British Admiralty, has a behind-the-scenes role in the saga of the Lusitania. Did your research into his role in any way change your opinion of Churchill?
Not really. I love Churchill as a historic character. Always have, always will. He was a brilliant man imbued with a reckless energy, and he was utterly ruthless. What I hadn’t fully appreciated, however, was his role in the disastrous Gallipoli affair. His mad energy and ego cost him dearly in WWI, but served him very well in the war that followed.  

Do you believe, as some have suggested, that the British Admiralty’s failure to protect the Lusitania in spite of its secret intelligence of the whereabouts of German U-boats, was a deliberate gamble to bring the U.S. into the war?
There’s no smoking memo or letter or telegram to confirm it. And certainly, at first glance, you’d have to be skeptical that any agency would deliberately allow 2,000 people to be killed. On the other hand, the fact the Lusitania was left to itself, without escort, and with only the most cursory of warnings, is utterly mystifying. For one prominent naval historian, whom I quote in my book, the circumstances were profoundly perplexing. Late in life he found himself forced to conclude that some sort of conspiracy likely occurred. But, again, that’s only speculation. I lay out a collection of evidence; readers can do with it what they will. 

Why was it important for your narrative to include the details of an autopsy that you warn squeamish readers about in your introductory note?
First of all, the mere fact that someone would want an autopsy done on a body that had been in the water for 75 days struck me as incredible—the likely artifact of deep, shattering grief. But the whole saga of finding that gentleman’s body, and all that happened afterward, struck me as something that offered a brand new view of the era and its customs. Further, it’s new; I stumbled across it by accident in files in the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Md. And new is good—though finding new things was certainly not my goal. Story was my goal. 

You write that false facts about the sinking of the Lusitania have sort of entered the DNA of the history of this event. What are the most egregious errors, and how have you tried to counteract them?
The most significant misapprehension is that the sinking of the Lusitania immediately dragged America into World War I. It did not. During my work on the book I would ask friends and family how long they thought it took for America to enter the war after the sinking. Estimates ranged from two days to several months. But in fact, America did not declare war for two full years, and when Wilson gave his speech to Congress asking for such a declaration he never once mentioned the Lusitania.  

Finally, what are the unresolved mysteries about the sinking of the Lusitania that plague you the most?
By the time I finished my research I was pretty satisfied with my understanding of the event. It’s very clear that one commonly claimed “fact”—that the ship was armed with naval guns—was utterly untrue. There were no guns aboard the Lusitania. Another body of rumor holds that there was a secret cache of explosives in its cargo holds, possibly disguised as shipments of cheese or oysters, and that this accounted for why the ship sank so quickly. There may indeed have been a secret cargo, but whether such a shipment existed or not is irrelevant. Explosive cargo had nothing to with the sinking. The Lusitania sank that fine May afternoon because of the chance convergence of a multitude of forces. A single variation in any vector could have saved the Lusitania.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Dead Wake.

 

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Adept at spinning historical events into gripping narratives, Erik Larson couldn't resist the storytelling potential of the Lusitania.

Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin worries that she’s becoming a bit of a happiness bully. “I don’t want to be a bore that everyone runs away from!” she says from her apartment on New York’s Upper East Side. “It’s very hard for me not to overwhelm everyone with research and suggestions and thoughts. That I find effortless. Not talking about it—that I find hard. I have such strong ideas.”
NonfictionTravel

John Marshall

Interview by Daniela Weil

In Wide-Open World: How Volunteering Around the Globe Changed one Family’s Life Forever, John Marshall brings the reader along on his family's six-month volunteering vacation. With two teenage kids who struggled to be connected to the world beyond their electronic devices, a 20-year marriage in urgent need of a rebirth, and a desire to be of service, the Marshalls set off to work in some of the most remote places on earth.

At the time you embarked on your journey, you had two teenagers: a 17-year-old son (Logan) and a 14-year-old daughter (Jackson). What was their reaction when you told them they would be leaving their school, friends and comfortable life to travel with mom and dad for six months to go work for free in Third World countries?
My son was into it. He was excited by the possibility. But my daughter Jackson was a harder sell. "Freshman year is kind of a big deal," she told me. But she came around. It was really an amazing chance to unplug them both and allow them to look up from cell phones or computers and see the world. It was also a great chance for us to spend time as a family. Now that they're off to college, I cherish our time on the trip even more.

Logan and Jackson Marshall in a classroom in Thailand.

 

Along your journey, you worked with wild animals in Costa Rica, muscled through organic farms in New Zealand, taught English in a remote village in Thailand, worked with orphans in India and helped in a Buddhist school in the Himalayas. Was there a part of the trip that you found most meaningful for your family?
Each stop had its own lesson to teach. At our first stop in Costa Rica, our kids got chewed out for not working hard enough and that really motivated them to try harder for the rest of the trip. But I think the orphanage in India was the most transformative. Certainly it was for me. Volunteering in the developing world is a jolt of reality. It's easy to sit at home and talk about the poor, to be sad in a general sense about world hunger or global poverty. But when I actually met real people who are poor and hungry . . . they were not what I was imagining. That was certainly true for orphaned children. Before leaving home, I thought of them as some general, faceless mass of regrettable humanity. But when I got to know them, one on one, as children, it's been impossible for me to return home and live as if they do not exist.

When you were at the orphanage in India, you connected with a 13-year-old boy named Job. His name was very symbolic of what he’d been through, and the faith he had. Can you explain why he was so important to you and what you learned from him?
For whatever reason two people connect, Job and I loved each other. He started as a funny, over-acting joker, acting as my bodyguard, giving up his seat whenever I entered the room, fanning me if the air was hot. But this was just his way of saying how much he liked me. I'm now his sponsor at the orphanage, and we're in touch all the time. But during our trip, Job symbolized to me the real power of volunteering. By traveling, by serving, we connect with people we would otherwise never meet. Just by showing up. Just by trying. If you asked Job who gave more, he would say that Uncle John did. That's what he called me. If you asked me, I would say that Job did. And that's the beauty of service. Everyone feels like they're getting a lot more than they're giving. It's the perfect exchange.

Which part of the trip had the most effect on your son?
I think Thailand was Logan's favorite. He was a little shy going into this trip. But in Thailand, he really came into his own. It didn't hurt that he was adored by the girls at the school where we were teaching. No kidding, they shrieked like he was a pop star at times, asking him for autographs, wanting to pose with him for pictures. Our daughter Jackson was also adored by the Thai boys, but Thailand was Logan's moment to shine. He taught his own English classes at just 17, made lots of friends, had a blast. It was fun to watch.

The Marshall family on Mt. Fyfe in New Zealand.

 

I find that a lot of teenagers in the United States suffer from lack of confidence, despite their parents spending their whole childhood telling them how special and wonderful they are. Do you see this lack of confidence in kids in other cultures? What part of the trip taught your kids most about confidence?
Yes and no. Some countries are extremely humble as a cultural norm. In Ladakh, in the north of India, we stayed in a Buddhist community and, as a rule, they were extremely soft spoken and modest. The children we met in rural Thailand were also quite shy at times. As for Western children, I feel we don't ask enough of them and perhaps their lack of confidence comes from never having really been challenged. On the road, our kids needed to work, and they really stepped up. On farms in New Zealand, they worked for three to five hours a day, which they rarely did at home. They taught their own English classes, three classes a day, five days a week. They worked alongside the orphans in the orphanage laundry and kitchen, which was a big, constant job. It was all hard, demanding work, but they did it. And now they know they can do it. Confidence comes from experience that pushes you beyond what you thought you were capable of—not from empty affirmations by well-meaning parents. Yes, you're special and wonderful. Now go clean out the anteater cage.

I have witnessed relationships between girls being very complex and difficult here. Was there something about your daughter’s experiences in the trip that may have helped her socially when she returned?
I think being a girl in America is a tough job. It's hard all over the world, but the U.S. has its own brand of teen challenges. Before she went on the trip, Jackson was a typical teenager. She loved her phone and her Facebook page, and she saw herself as the center of the world, which is pretty normal. But on the trip, she began to focus out and realize that other people had much bigger problems than she did. She also made friends with girls her age who were orphaned at birth or extremely poor, and this has a power to put the materialism and our celebrity-obsessed culture in a new perspective.

Her friends are still very important to her and she still loves her phone, but she's much less concerned by "First World" problems, as she says.

How do you think this trip changed you and your wife as parents?
Parents don't often get the chance to see their children's best selves. We hear about it from other parents, how well they behaved at a friend’s house or at school. But on our trip, we got to see it every day. When they didn't think we were watching, we'd see them reading to a child at the orphanage, or playing with a group of younger children at the Thai school. Working hard, being kind. I don't think the trip changed my wife and me as parents. If anything, it just made us feel that our kids would be just fine when they left home, which is all we've ever tried to give them.

John Marshall with Sweetie

 

I was really touched when you asked a teenage girl in the Himalayas what she was most grateful for and she answered without hesitation, “I am most grateful for my beloved parents. They provide me with all that I have and they are like precious jewels I have been given but do not deserve.” What is it that we’re getting wrong as parents that our kids would NEVER say this about us here in America?
In American culture, we glorify youth. Children have all the answers. It's like the Bart Simpson-ification of our country. Like Homer, parents are idiots. Children are the cool ones. But other countries don't pump this message down their children's throats. Parents are revered, respected. And really, why shouldn't they be? It really struck me on the trip. Anyone who is a parent and tries to raise their children with love, sacrifices on a dozen simultaneous levels. And yet every cultural message our kids hear is that we parents are fools. When you meet children who love their parents as "precious jewels," it's not hard to see that they have something to teach us.

You describe an encounter in Tibet with a poor boy on the street. He felt the need to give you something, though he had nothing. He pulled out a half-eaten filthy fruit from his pocket, and insisted that you take it. What did that moment mean to you?
This was in the tiny village of Stok that is like a time capsule for rural Tibet. The people make their own clothes, farm the land, live as a community. It's a very simple way of life, but they survive by sharing with one another. Most of the time, when children approach you on the street, they are begging. But this boy and his two friends saw me and, true to their upbringing, wanted to give me something. I thought they were begging, but they weren't. And when I saw how happy they were to give me the only things they had—a few dirty apricots and a half eaten apple—it was a great lesson in the joy that can come from giving.

What would you say to parents like me, who have a secret desire to up and leave for a year of “voluntourism” but feel like it would be impossible?
It's not impossible, Daniela! Really, if we can do it, so can you. We were not rich and bored. I didn't have a book deal before we left. We took out a home equity loan to make it happen. The trick is to decide to do it. Not dream of it or desire it but make a commitment to get out the door. For people who are interested, I have a section at the back of the book that spells out how much we paid and exactly what we did. If that helps anyone make their dream of family volunteer travel come true, I will be extremely honored. For anyone who does go, I encourage you to go with a learner's mind and a sense of humility. You will not change the world. It's the world that will change you.

RELATED CONTENT: Read our review of Marshall's book.

Daniela Weil was born and raised in Sao Paolo, Brazil, and now lives in Houston with her daughter Lucy. Trained as a whale biologist, Weil is also a writer and illustrator whose work includes both children’s books and scientific illustrations. She is the creator of the web comic The World According to Lucy, which chronicles the experiences of an introverted adoptive mom parenting the fearless, free-spirited Lucy.

In Wide-Open World: How Volunteering Around the Globe Changed one Family’s Life Forever, John Marshall brings the reader along on his family's six-month volunteering vacation. With two teenage kids who struggled to be connected to the world beyond their electronic devices, a 20-year marriage in urgent need of a rebirth, and a desire to be of service, the Marshalls set off to work in some of the most remote places on earth.

Zac Bissonnette

Zac Bissonnette’s latest book, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute, is a fascinating cautionary tale about where financial hysteria can lead—and who gets hurt when a bubble abruptly pops.

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