now, we're going to kick off the festival request author beth macey. she tells the story of jorge and willy muse. they were two african-american brothers who were kidnapped and forced to perform in a circus in 1899. and it's about their mother as well who searched for them for over 28 years. this is live coverage of the southern book festival on booktv. alice carey as a reader ofbook page i read a lot of book and one of my favorite this is year is "true vine" it took 20 years to inearth this saga with feign staking research on multiple fronts to inearth as she writes to entang am industry of truth. ...

with the idea of writing a story about the famous great uncle, it was clear that all personal details were going to be closely held. trickling out in dribs and drabs on nancy's timeline. first time i could the sign said sit down and shut up. willy was not now or ever be available for comment. so, hoping to generate goodwill for a goofuture story, i write

about the restaurant the menu was not written down. i would commit this to memory. tuesdays on spaghetti and lasagna and over other pork chops. wednesday is first and country fried steaks, and friday is ribs, get there early because it sell out early. the lunch begins at 12:15 and not a moment before and later usually if nancy has to run home to check on uncle willie, in the midst of a bad day. and uncle willy's favorite was spaghetti. and she kept a painted rock on the cash register it was a gift from her nephew-- when i returned to lunch two

days after my story ran because rib fridays were my favorite. nancy shook her finger at me and it was clear i was fot getting anything close to a pat on the back. her mother dot sat nearby, peeling potatoes and watching the young and the restless cringing about what her daughter had been about to say. nancy had been ready to send me packing when i walked into the restaurant and inquired about her uncle, but soft-hearted dot let me stay and do the restaurant feature. and in my youth i actually saw the very first episode of young and the restless. i bonded quickly with dot over the characters and helping to peel potatoes in the kitchen before the episode was over, much to nancy's chagrin and victor newman was a scoundrel. now what your story about, nancy said. brought out a bunch of crazy white people, that's all. >> paying customers, i might have added, but she was in no mood for back talk. she walked past me with no further comment.

she was leaving to feed uncle willy and turning him in his bed. she did many times,s a many as five times a shift. if nancy saunders had her way, his story would have left. she found the tale embarrassing and raw. the year was 1961 and black and white people i a like wanted to know were the light skinned brothers black or white. had they really been trapped in a cage and force today eat raw meat. they deserved respect and not the gawkers that came at their house all hours knocking on the front door, some of her first memories people banging on the door the middle of the night. by the time i came on the scene, no one talked about circus greats, nancy, a no frills afro, at the temples and baked bread as good as her

great-grandmother's harriet as cake. and even red who knew the family well and grew up in the neighborhood around the corner from the muses and is now a social sciences professor, he had never contemplated bringing the subject up with them. that's one exceptionally guarded family, he told me, you've got to take baby stems. you have to think of them as a tribe, they fallout with each other, but if you fall out with one of them, they will come roaring back at you like an army. it was ten more years before nancy warmed up enough to let me and a co-writer author a newspaper series about her uncle and only after willy muse's death in 2001. he was 108. she didn't reveal much. she invited my reporter, jen, and a photographer in the house one time and made reference to a family bible we were not permit today view and for years after the series ran, whenever i visited the restaurant she hinted there was so much more to the story than we had found.

she actually, when she would say things like that, she would call me scoop. our newspaper was the same one that in the version of the kidnapping story decades earlier. and looked the other way when city officials decimated two black historical neighborhoods, via urban renewal or as the people called it kneeing negro removal. they refused to print black wedding announcements for brides until the mid 1970's, because of the wealthy white publisher, roanoke, had no black middle class. i myself had used a pair of pregnant black teens to illustrate a story about high pregnancy rate. and a story that went viral before that internet term existed and the made the girls an object of ridicule and even rush limbaugh joined in with a rant. when the girls dropped out of

school shortly after my story ran, it was devastating. words linger and words matter, i learned and it's not possible to predict the fallout they can have on subject's lives. it would take me 25 years, finally, to earn something nearing nancy's trust, to convince her, i wasn't one more candy peddler intent on exploiting her relatives for the color of their skin or purely for my financial benefits. in 2013 when i hit a snag updating and wrote a story, an updated story on the pregnant teens, more than 20 years after the original explosive first story, it seemed fate that one of them, now a 37-year-old mother of four lived around the corner from the roanoke ranch house. after some angry relatives tried to bully the relatives, physically threatening me and demanding a meeting with my newspaper bosses, nancy reassured me you don't need their permission to do the story just like you really don't need mine to write the

book, not really, you don't. and yet, months earlier, nancy's permission is exactly what i sought. on the eve of publishing my first book about a third generation factory owner who had battled chinese imports to save the company, i had given her an advanced reading copy of factory man, and a chapter on race relations i'd found particularly hard to navigate. and mistreatment of workers, and the treatment of black domestic workers who resorted to wearing two girdles at the same time as the defense against their boss's groping hands andout right rape. nancy said it's been that way down through history. a friend of my mom, she'd be vacuuming down the steps and the husband will be feeling her from behind and my mother had to fill in, and she told the man first thing, don't make me open up your chest, by which dot meant with the tip of my knife.

and nancy had come a long way from the days of sit down and shut up. it was no ways a gimme when i called her in november asking to pursue her uncle's story as a book. she had retired closing the shop. i wanted her help devilling into the family story and with the muse still living in true vine. i'll think about it, she said. and the message was theer, i was not to call back, she would call me, november 11th, i wrote it in my calendar, thanksgiving game, christmas came, i sent her a christmas card, ps. here is my phone number. more than six weeks later, oh, she enjoyed making me wait. i waited to give it to you so i could give it to you as a christmas present. it was christmas morning nancy decide today let me write her uncle's story under one

condition, no matter what you find out or what your research turns up, you have to remember in the end, they came out on top. i knew the story's ending already, i assured her, i'd already interviewed several people, nurses and doctors, neighbors and lawyers, all of whom declared the late life care she'd given as impeccable. i was less certain who had forced them into servitude and the humanity and the work compensated. how exactly, during the harsh years of jim crowe had george and willy managed to escape. >> how frustrating was it all those years knowing that this remarkable story was so close and yet, so far away? did you ever feel like giving up? >> well, i did give up because she said no. she actually said, i asked her, i said, you wouldn't-- you didn't even let me interview him and say i would hold the interview until after

he passed away 'cause that was her rule, she didn't want anything written about him until he passed away. she said, oh, you're too curious. she didn't think i could hold the interview. i said if i would hold the interview i would, but she didn't believe me. and now she says, oh, when you walked into that shop the first time and you just thought i would give you the story, i said to myself, scratch has met her match. i was scratch and she was the match. >> you call yourself a unicorn in the ranks of journalism because in this globe trotting world you stayed in one place roanoke for decades. how has your staying power allowed you to write both of your books, both of which required very deep reporting. >> not many books are written from rural america. i live in a city, a valley of about a quarter million and most reporters move on after a few years, i mean, with some of our best reporters are now at

the new york times and done great stuff and i've decided to stay. i stayed at the roanoke times for 25 years, i'm no longer there, but you see, i'm still writing stories, this began with my time at the roanoke times and so, i'm able to write these stories because i have time on my side. >> robert caroll says time equals truth. maybe she didn't want to talk in 1991, and let me do a restaurant feature. i thought sometime maybe she would let me do the story and it became how the places in town or people in town i call my story beacons. they're people who can lead me to other people in the community and at the time in the early '90s, and newspapers across the country, diversity was a big push. i mean, newspapers were much better staffed then, and i had this fantastic first editor,

her name was wendy, tough as nails. the paper had emphasis on having moore black editors and more black reporters and doing stories reflecting the diversity in our community. and so, that if i was writing a general story about something, and roanoke has a 23% black population, if one of my four sources in the four source story was an african-american, she would send -- wasn't an african-american, she would send it back. that was wonderful training and led me to a beat that the paper called, i was the family's beat reporter, but really what i did was-- i had been trained to work outside of my zip code and to be getting stories that nobody else really had the entrees into because i had spent time with immigrants, refugees, care givers for the elderly, veterans with ptsd and i had

really kind of made my-- that my beat. so, one of my favorite characters in the book is-- he passed away recently. al holland. he was a muse, a distant relative. a civil rights leader in roanoke and he was a 11-year-old boy in 1927 when harriet muse got her sons back and his job after school was, he would-- he would help a blind man sell brooms on the city market that he made. and so, he had this wonderful, like kind of insider view to the story and he was there when they came home that night. and so, he's 98 when i interviewed him for this book, but i knew him because i had done numerous articles on it before and so, i just think because i had made those connections in the community, i was able to get people to trust me, but it was really the time. the fact that i'm still there. this is-- these are my people. i know them and they -- they trust me.

>> and maybe, if she had said, yes, go ahead, 25 years ago, you wouldn't have been ready to write this book. you'd have people like joanne poindexter and-- >> yes, joanne was the newspaper's first black reporter, so, the neighborhood in roanoke, the truevine west end and the microvillage in the west end only the old people refer to an as jordan's alley or jordan's alley and joanne was able to -- who still, she doesn't live in the neighborhood anymore, but goes to church there and she was able to put me in touch with 80, 90, 100-year-old people who could help me bring that neighborhood alive. >> one of the questions of the story is like what happened, how did she get them back and also, were their lives better in the circus than at home and begs, how was life in jim crowe in roanoke, virginia. what was that like? was it better than life on the road?

so i was able to drive around with these older people and, i didn't always drive around, but i always got my best stuff when i drove around. it kind of reminds me when your kids are teenagers and they don't want to talk to you except when you're in the car because you're looking at something else. people, not only what they would seeing would jog their memory, but comfortable because they're facing forward in it. i did that, it was a technique i used, it's not technique, it's nothing special, but i did that a lot in factory man and i did drive people around the same places and start to hear some of the same stories and next time i could say so-and-so said this and that's my mo, i drive around with my phone on record with their permission. >> you also say that kitchens are a great place to do an interview. >> oh, yes, kitchens. you all know kitchens, right? that's where everybody land at a party, right? everybody is in the kitchen, even though the host doesn't want you there because people

are just more comfortable in the kitchen because that's where we live. so i always ask, if we can do the interview in the kitchen, i usually have some questions written out and, my recorder and it's easier and i also take notes because i don't trust the recorder, and it's easier if i have all of my stuff on the table. that's what i say really because i want people to be in the kitchen, that's where they live. >> and by staying in one place, you haven't limited yourself in terms of material because just a few blocks away from this, another person wrote another best seller from jordan's alley. >> yes, rebecca immortalized henrietta, she was a block away from-- in jordan's alley a block away from where the muse family lived on 10 1/2 street. remarkable that these--

i think every place has remarkable stories. and in this tiny place, they're very different stories. >> very-- very similar, but different. >> yeah, well, the facts in the story that you wrote are so few and far between that photographic evidence and research played an important role. >> yeah. >> and at what point in the process did you realize that they would be so vital ap how did you use them? >> there was a circus historian that i was interviewing named dick flint and he reminded me that the circus managers would often change their names and the brothers were very-- they called darwin's missing link, the ambassadors from mars. the sheepheaded men, the ecuadorean savages, they were never called george and willy muse. if i got in a data base, i could type in eko and iko and it wouldn't bring up the other names. i had to be cognizant of that and also, the photographs

themselves just became a great reporting tool because those are-- the news clippings were so skewed against-- they never reported what the brothers actually saw and even the stories about the reunion. they never recorded what the family's point of view was and even went to the point of quoting harriet muse in dialect and quotes of the wrong person, they didn't actually talk to her. but the photos i photograph-- these are the earliest photos of child exhibits and when i saw it, they looked like scared young brothers, had been taken from their mother. they were told that she was dead and they should quit crying, and i just studied it and then somebody said, you know, there's-- there's a person in charleston named joshua bond, a professor, who studies historical costuming.

i sent him the picture and he blew it up and he saw so much more in the picture than my eyes could see. he noticed, he said the seams were stretching. he says these suits are about two sizes too small. they're kind of nice suits, so there was some care given to ruse of these boys eastman's monkey men, but the suits are too short. during this time, so you've got that evidence and what's going on in that picture and then family stories of willy telling everyone that when he was little, he was-- georgi would look after him and there was a popular song in 1914 called it's a long way to temporary, the world war i anthem about missing home. you can have stories, pictures, and the documentation and it

exists in sort of this very racialized lens, but that's what i tried to do, just to bring it into its fullness. the pictures were great. i found this picture, this is from around 1917, there was the circus by then and so mr. barnes writes his memoir in 1930's and he brags about buying them and making them a paying proposition, so, that's more proof. i mean, he was proud of it because why wouldn't he be because everybody thought african-americans were subhuman and he was getting something over on them. and so this picture, i showed to nancy when i found it and it's the first picture of them with instruments. and we weren't driving around, but that picture prompted a memory. she remembered willy saying the first time they were handed pictures, it was just to be a photo prop. so one of the ways that managers would make extra money is they would have pictures of their acts. and then they would sell them

and they would keep that money, and so, some of the-- they were called pitch cards. so, that was supposed to be a photo prop. oh, certainly, they can't play instruments. it turns out they were kind of geniuses. they could hear a song once and play it, according to many, many reports. and we have a recording, unfortunately i can't share, we have a recording of him singing and there's a picture in the book of him playing his guitar and the fret boards are total worn down. and when nancy had that photo. she had the joke kind of on them because they were wonderful musicians. and here is another picture, the only known picture of them with their of their captors, al g barnes. and once their mother got them back, a protracted legal battle to get them paid, you can see

in the pictures that they have more agencies in their lives, they're happier so this is a casual back yard picture, that's what they called kind of back stage in the circus and you know, they had friends, they'd play music. there's accounts in my interview of people remember them playing music and the music gave them like this agency and power that music does. like any skill that we have. any, like writing makes me feel good when it's working and music made them feel good. and it gave them something to do and it gave them self-power, so-- >> and can you describe what their life was like in the circus before their mother got them and after? and explain how many years went by before she-- >> right. so i'm sure at least 13 years went by.

it could have been-- the documentation is scant on that, but he said, willie always told nancy that, you know, they were guarded kind of closely in the beginning. there was a bit of stockholm syndrome going on. they were illiterate, never allowed to go to school. late in life she taught him how to write his name even though he was totally blind. that was a big moment for him, he can't have to sign an x. the side show managers -- and their main manager was really the only person he said anything bad about and he really hated him even at age 107. he remembered him -- he remembered some pretty vile things about him, but once she got them back, they were-- and they knew they could come home after that, even though they still tried to take advantage of them and not pay them when they could get away with it, they became happier and as i say, that was really

the only world they knew. >> and they traveled the world and they became famous. >> yeah. >> and the headlines of the new york times. they became famous. they performed before royalty in england. one of willy's-- whenever the door bell would ring when he was an old man at the house in roanoke which was able to be bought and paid for by the time they retired. that's what she did by getting that legal settlement. whenever the door bell would ring, he would go "housekeeping" which he learned at a hotel in london and i just loved that. >> well, one of the real heroes of this book is willy and george's mother harriet. and what you call as a badass in a quest to get her boys back. >> in 1927 roanoke, virginia, very harsh place to be an african-american. there was actually city code

that said where you could live and you know, you couldn't -- segregation was just so ingrained and everything. so at the circus, blacks were told they had to sit in the back, under the big top. if it was a carnival, they would make one day out of the seven-day stretch the day that from i can one day african-americans could come. october 14th, it had come to her-- she told relatives in a dream that her brothers-- that her sons were with the circus and this is a story that passed through the family for generations. so in 1927, the top law enforcement official in roanoke, virginia, was the founder of the local kkk, which was the largest kkk in the state. there's picture of them in the book.

it was a semi respectful institution. the families were members of the kkk. the train unloads, goes over to the fairgrounds, and that's where they set up. the fairground is where the kkk had had the rallies. so, the side show was the one of the rare places in the circus where segregation broke down because there weren't seats. you walked around. like you would go from-- the crowd would sort of walk from one part of the stage to the other as each act demonstrated their skill or answered some questions. i have a picture of her from the next day so i know what she looked like and i know how the side show worked and the brothers remembering, they're on stage playing one of their songs, and they can't see very well because of their albinism.

and every member of the family recounts it the same way, willy elbows george-- and george elbows him and there is our dear old mother, she is not dead. >> and the police come and ringling lawyers, they want to take the brothers to the next stop. and the mother wants them home. the manager says they're my children and had paper work that had their last name as his last name. and somehow she got them-- she got the-- she talked the police into letting her bring them home, not going back to the circus. and then not only that, a couple of days later, she hired a really young ambitious lawyer and she filed a lawsuit against the greatest show on earth. i mean, that was moxie. >> and she kept at it. >> she kept at it because whenever they could, because they could get away with, they

would not pay them. so the manager would switch them to another show. ringling was paying them and he would switch them to some other show and he would pocket the money and then she-- she and another-- she found another lawyer and through this very clever, but kind of awful sounding legal arrangement. she had them declared incompetent. so the court was in charge, if the checks bounced they would go and find them and they might be in canada, in oregon. they would actually, this lawyer and a bail bondman would find them, track them down and get the circus to pay up. >> and figuring out how they did that was another to untangle. >> there was no internet and she was illiterate-- >> they were written about in the new york times, but in

roanoke, this they would get it now in roanoke. >> it's amazing that she intersected with them finally. >> it is. it isment. >> and when told the story has been largely untold mainly because of their race and social status and not to mention their disability. help us understand this widespread story of erasure and interviewing after the ordeal. >> i interviewed one of the reporters from in roanoke, and i-- he remembers whenever an african-american was in the news he had to put comma color, in and that gave me feedback what it was like being a reporter then. and i wrote down some of the

quotes of the way the media treated the reunion. and the roanoke times from the day after she found her sons, the family reunion was quote, was told of in the newspapers, others talked of it all the while, humming happy mammy songs, never reported the family. not that they were developed in mental capacity which i refuted over and over again in interviews. a new yorker piece the following year in 1928 said. they did as they walk, their eyes didn't quite focus and loved monkeys and kangaroos. >> their eyes didn't focus because of albinism and the fried chicken had given out in roanoke. there's no mention of the years of servitude and blacks are

considered subhuman. they're happy and they didn't mention the laws or servitude. they're back and happy it was surreal and the predominant way that people saw it. it's heart breaking and shocking and that's the world they're trying to create and that's the challenges they face. >> here you thought it was a book about the circus, it certainly is and they're endlessly fascinating stories about the circus, but it's so much about race and here you were, this-- the roanoke times reporter and they were one of the many

paper, how did you get them to trust you. and what were some of the stories that they told you as you were driving around? >> well, one of the-- one of my story beacons was joanne poindexter. she's now retired in her 60's and she called up basically the older ladies in her church that had grown up in the neighborhood and asked if i would interview them. she helped me in my career. when i wrote that pregnant and proud story that got me in so much hot water, half that i had a hard time getting african-american people to trust me in the city. i didn't mean to make those girls the subject of ridicule, i honestly didn't, but that's what happened and she would actually go out to interviews-- like there was a church that was starting and it had been a crack house and i was trying to get the neighbors to open up to

me about it because i wanted to do a story on-- that's a pretty cool story, the crack house turning into a church. and joanne went around the neighborhood and vouched for me. and she did the same thing-- much years later with this, too. and again, they had read my stories and seen the work i had done since then. where i wasn't just doing like drive by anecdote reporting, i was digging in, spending time with people and so, i think i was able to reap the bounty of just my time there. >> well, one low point in your research, you complained to canadian historian jay nicholas about the difficulties of your tasks and she gave you a valuable people of device.

if we wrote only stories of people with stories, you had to use what was at hand. how did the words inspire you? >> i was beating myself up because there were so many holes still. that's right, the way she put it like that. it gave me permission and there's a reason i had that because there was institutional racism because of the coverage of it and it just, if i can write about that, i can cast it in even more deeper context and that really helps me. and i also complained to one of nancy's younger relatives, that it was hard to get some of these basic facts. like their births weren't recorded and the years are listed in numerous different years in the documents. and the i was just complaining to a younger relative, so she

told nancy and nancy sent back the message. if she thinks the story was hard to write, she should think about how hard it was for uncle georgi and uncle willy to live, she better pick her ass up. so-- >> you picked your ass up? >> i tried, i tried. >> tell us about george and willy's life after the circus. >> because of that secondary lawsuit where their mother got guardionship, the checks were sent home and most of the money was settled into like a retirement account. when this was, social security didn't exist. by the end of 1961, a really nice house was bought and paid for for them and the family, nancy, her mother dot, her grandparents, they all lived in the house together and they took astonishing good care. they sort of protected them,

the barber would come to their house to cut their hair, they wouldn't have to go out because people would still say rude things and they watched over them and later, when he was in his late 90's, i think it was, he was in the hospital. actually, he was incredibly healthy, he was on no medication and, and put him in the hospital and and a nurse put a-- it was too high and when nancy came in he had life threatening burns it took two years to he heal. the family called her the warden and she was not happy. she, like her grandmother found a scrappy formidable lawyer in town and sued the hospital, which is the largest employee

in roanoke, and the settlement enabled her to work and have full-time care for him. and so, some of the best sources of him in his later life are the nurses who would come to the house to tend his burn wound and to take care of him. and it's like-- how the story progresses and in cautionary tale and what the parents would say. >> they all stay together or you might get kidnapped like eko and iko. and the end of their lives, the wise elders in the community, given the nurses or willy, giving his nurse great advice, to feed them honey. being better than the person who was mistreated. and i just-- i think he had a wonderful late

life and you described him as being so gracious and he always said god is good to me, even after all he'd been through and it's on his botombstone. >> and he said that, god is good to me. >> she said he had almost a magical quality? >> she did. initially, i had a little bit of trouble convincing my publisher and editor that i was going to be able to find enough facts to make this a book so i was asking, i was calling nancy and she had given me permission. i'm not sure i'm going to be able to get this as a book, so finally, i did some more research, i did sort of an addendum to my proposal how i was going to find out all of this stuff and when i finally called and told her i had sold the book. she said, i told you, just remember, they always come out on top in the end. so uncle willy was having this-- she believed uncle willy is

responsible and she thinks the book is going to do really well, because uncle willy is looking out for me and i love that and i hope she's right. [laughter] >> well, you-- your books are about connecting with people and about connecting the past and the present. and this is your advice for young reporters, get away from your damn smartphones and computers. go back to the basics, papers, scissors, be the glue, as a reporter once told you. and can you elaborate how this has been your m-o? >> documents can only take you so far. memoirs written, i mean, that was a great find when i found the guy bragging about buying this. all the paper work can take you so far, but there's no substitute for going and meeting people and hearing their stories. >> i mean, the best parts of

the book, i think, are this-- these gritty, kind of microaggressions that these men and women lived with during jim crow. like the little girls walking to school past the white lady's house and there were parrots and they were trained to squawk epithets at them. and the ladies, rent collectors who accepted sex in partial payments. i'd never have the stories had i not gone out to spent the time to know people and they know me and open up to stories. >> that's the heart and soul of your book, i think. >> thank you, thank you. >> in addition to the remarkable story. one i think thing if you comment on. because the brothers were portrayed in the circus as sort of being i mbeciles.

>> it happened that a lawyer interviewed him, and i took him out to lunch and i was having trouble finding documents. and the circuit court clerk helped me find them. and he took him out to lunch. he he said i deposed him. and i said what was he like? he gave me detail. if you think he was mentally incapacitated? oh, my heaven no. another lawyer to deposed him said it was mid december and there was a better handle on his christmas shopping than he did. >> and he was blind. >> he was blind and he knew exactly what nancy was getting and how much money it was going to cost and, yeah. >> the doctors, the nurses, he just had this way about him.

one of the nurses remembers walking up the stairs and he heard her footsteps and he said, who is there? and he she said, it's the nurse and he said, does the nurse have a name? >> you know, like you can tell me your name. >> how hard was it making the leap from writing articles to books? >> well, a good friend of mine that was in long time reporter with, ralph, jr., had written his first book before factory man had come out and gave me the advice, it sounds simple and it was so on and gave me the confidence. it's just like one very, very long feature article, so it was. it's all the same tools, it's all the same reporting techniques, and the trust building, the documents, calling around to experts, taking what experts said, running it by another expert, showing a picture to somebody who is an expert on cast

assumisum-- costuming. it's the same skills, but it's over more, more time, 100 years, both books covered 100 years and it has to, like things have to kind of did-- can't be totally apart from this part and this part. in factory man, my editor said the first time he read it, he said it reads like two books, the first part like southern virginia and the second like china. a southern virginia maker, keeping on trade to keep workers employed. what his section was was to build on what was going on in china early in the book, so at the same time it would seem to be more seamless. i had that in my mind as i was writing truevine. this is boring office supply shop talk, but i have this stuff called wizard wall, plastered, like a dry erase and you can move it and all over my walls and so i would keep up with little threads that i'd

know i'd want to keep back to. to me, that's the big difference, you're still writing and i write like, i plot out a chapter and then i put up the sections and i want each section, each chapter to read almost like it would stand alone, but then i want each section to have a little, in journalism kickers, the end. and i want each section would have a kicker and the chapter to have a kicker and then all to sort of feed on what the next chapter will be, so you're leaving people wanting to keep turning the page. >> so this is such an intricate story, there are so many facets, in the past and present and how did you figure out that structure? you know, i like the way you interweave it. you start with the basic story. and then you go into you trying to get the story. so-- >> and then basically, it's chronological after that. except for these digressions

and then i say, i did this because that adds another lawyer of context to it and newspapers are not allowed to include ourselves in stories and i always-- i mean, i always just went along with it, i didn't put myself in stories, but i have written some essays, and i-- i feel like it's almost more honest when we're peeking behind the curtain a little bit and showing the leader how we got the information. in factory man, some of the best, most telling details about john basset iii are his constant calling me on the phone. he's just relentless trying to control the story and what it is. one day, 8:00 in the morning, he's called me three times and my phone was upstairs and i was downstairs. by the time i go up at 8:14, he says, well, i guess you're sleeping in today. like, can you imagine that? not being in the book? like that shows like his relentlessness. and so i would have lost some

of the best stuff on the cutting room floor. that's why i do that. >> well, do we have any audience questions? if you could come up to the microphone, if anyone has any questions for beth? >>. >> thank you for being here, i've enjoyed so much. your sign instead of saying sit down and shut up, should say i don't give up. i feel like we've been with you through your journey to write this work and i'd like to know how you celebrate it when you knew it was going to publish and going to become a book. what did you do to celebrate? >> well, i called nancy and i had a little celebration with her and then, my husband and i celebrated because, hey, i've got an income for the next few years. [laughter] >> and this week, the book comes out tuesday, we're going

to have a book launch party in roanoke, and nancy and her family are coming, and all of those old ladies that i drove around, i hope, if they're willing are coming. 102-year-old aj reed from truevine who brought sort of the world of share cropping alive for me in this book. he's going to be-- i said, now, your niece estelle said she would come and get you because truevine is an hour away. he said if i feel like coming i'm going to drive myself. i think it's going to be really fun and exciting and to me that's going to be the moment like, when nobody celebrated them when they came home in 1927 except to want to see them and ogle them again and i hope it's going to be a kind of special thing for the family, almost like a homecoming, you know? so that will be great. >> you definitely needed a party. >> yes. >> thank you. . >> yes, ma'am? >> can you hear me? >> i can hear you.

>> [inaudible] >> this is such an important story and i am so glad you never gave up trying to write it. i'm wondering if you are african-american, would it have been easier for you to get the information or what is your perspective on that? >> yeah, i mean, i don't really know because i'm not. i -- it took me a long time to understand nancy's mistrust of the media and her mistrust of me. i mean, really, i would have held the story if she'd let me interview her, but really not until i delved into the way the family had been treated did i really understand this tough, tough layer that she has. and because i was there, she-- she's read every single article

i'd written, she was kind of judging me for 25 years through the stories i wrote. when i would go in to get my ribs and fridays, she had talk about whatever i had written that had been in the paper she'd have a discussion about it and she became one of the people, one of the story beacons in the community that would help me find other stories. i did a ten-part series on care giving for the elderly in 2008 or so, and all the people we profiled in there were people i got from nancy and so, i just think it's really important that we have to be inclusive. so, back to the first rule that my old editor caught me, you know, you need to write stories that reflect all of the community and-- >> and it's how you set up a relationship. >> it is. and it's a joy to do. i mean, there are days when i drive around and i can't believe i get paid to do this. i basically get paid. like getting a graduate degree

in whatever you're interested in and that's, that's why i love what i do. >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> thank you, beth for your wonderful conversation. >> wonderful. >>. [applause] >> and that was author beth macy live from the southern festival of books here in nashville. now, in about ten minutes, the next author will be talking about her book and it's national book award finalist,

arly russell hopeshield and she looks at the political state of the right. we'll being back from the southern festival in a few minutes. >> so the phrase all lives matter is that in many ways some assumption that many of us begin with. the point of saying black lives matter is to really highlight the extent to which black lives have not mattered in the united states. and most recently, concerning the issue with police abuse and violence. and i think the reluctance to embrace that really shows the depth of the lack of understanding about what the condition of african-americans in this country actually is. and to some extent, i think we can understand it.

we live in a deeply segregated country where white people have no idea what black people's lives are like in this country. and to-- it's not the samenessly for african-americans who see the lives of white people on television all the time. but that does speak to an additional problem, which is that there's more general issue with the absence of seeing poor white people and ordinary white people and so, there's a whole number of ways that our lives are distorted in this country and talking about black lives matter is really about bringing attention to the conditions of black people which i think for most americans are shrouded and that they have absolutely no understanding of. >> you can watch this and other programs on-line and book tv.org. >> presidential candidates hillary clinton and donald

trump have written several books, many of which outline their world view and political philosophy. democratic candidate hillary clinton has written five books. in her most recent title, "hard choices" she remembers her 2008 presidential campaign and her time as secretary of state in the obama administration. in 2014, book tv spoke with secretary clinton about the book and you can find that interview on our website. published in 2003, living history is secretary clinton's time in the white house as first lady. and family pets and authored a coffee table book as life as first lady. in her first book "it takes a village" she argues society shares the responsibility with parents raising children. republican presidential candidate donald trump has also written many books, his first several titles released in the

1980's and '90s are accounts of his business and real estate companies. he released several financial self-help books. in the recent books, time to get tough and crippled america, he writes about politics and outlines prosperity. several of these have been discussed on book tv and you can find them on our website, booktv.org. >> how often have you heard a politician in the last two years say something like this, i'll quote a brief paragraph. many people watching tonight can probably remember a time when finding a good job meant showing up at a nearby factory or a business downtown. you didn't always need a degree. your competition was pretty much limited to your neighbors, if you worked hard, chances are you had a job for life with a decent paycheck and benefits and occasional promotions maybe have pride of seeing your kids work the a the same company. that world change and for many,

the change has been painful, end quote. that happens to be president obama in a state of the union address a couple of years ago, but it could easily be almost any politician or either party at this point. with emphasis. with the cultural cohesion, it might have been a republican, mitt romney in the last election, any of the candidates in this election. with explicitness on the equality of that time could have been hillary clinton or elizabeth warren, often is. with it could be donald trump calling for rolling back globalization and immigration and recovering what we lost. america isn't what it used to be, the that's the theme of contemporary american politics. and it speaks to a public anxiety that often comes down to a question that is asked in anguish, what has happened to our country? and you know, it's not a bad question. something big and significant certainly has happened to our country. and in its less cartoonish

forms. the nostalgia is understandable. the america that our exhausted politics wishes so much, the nation as emerged from the second world war and the great depression was cohesive. it had an amazing confidence in big institutions and big government and labor and business and managing the nations, managing the nation together and meeting its needs. that confidence, by the way, is just stunning when you look at what people were saying and thinking in mid century america from our vantage point. america's cultural life mid century was dominated by a moral attendance, religious attendance was at a peak, family was strong, birth rates were high, divorce rates were low. in the wake of a war in which most of its competitors literally burned economies to the ground, the united states dominated the world economy which for a while offered

economic opportunities to all kinds of workers, with all kinds of skill levels. but almost immediately after the war, that consolidated nation started a long process of unwinding, of fragmenting. over the decades, culturalized and diversified as struggles against racism, coincided with the massive increase in immigration. it's important to recognize the latter, by the way, we don't think about the scale quite enough. because of immigration restrictio restrictions, mid century america had an incredibly low level of cultural diversity until those were lifted in the 1960's. in the 1970 census, those living abroad, and today all time high of 20%. that's part of what happened to to our country.

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