tougher call if there were live that would be risked and just the office building burning to the ground, like trump said, burn, baby, burn. let it burn. if it'st' housing and we've got families

>> we'll have a book signing and at the bookstore froms 4-5:00 p.m. as well for a signing and book sales of course

provided by midtown scholar bookstores and great partner of the cinema. edgar award finalist for best fact crime and a novel where you end.

>> thank you, everybody, for coming out and, stuart, for that introduction and i appreciate your enthusiasm for the story in general. and jude law. >> he's dealt with a lot of wonderful independent movies was jude law and jumping right into

it and in the undone, you focus on the group of eccentrics. >> that's a kind word. >> very kind word. >> unpack them in the second and theygoing for the opposite and

"was dr. raider with his steel teeth poisoned in pair dice? was baroness eloise with poison painties and going to be -- panties and murdered by one of his love slaves and mystery to be solved at last and record scratch moment and everything stopped around me and i abandoned any other idea and thinking about this is the book i wanted to write. my publisher said no, we want american history with american characters and my heart and mind was on the story and took out the publisher that published this book>> they're absolute

aeby czar and attack ads and they're all very human and they're nothe did not trust

civilization andte wanted to abandon civilization and hone theea fill toes cal ideas and world renowned ideas and extracted all theses teams and had them replaced with a good set of steel dentures and it's this woman that's 26 years old and she's suffering from multiple sclerosis and every doctor helps her that her condition is incurable except

for frederick saying of course you can cure this and all in the power of your mind.

>> another family comes and things are calm and what could possibly go wrong next. and the baroness is the answer to that question. when the story starts, she's a venus woman living in paris and it'sea a galapagos affair for those living before and she's always described as self-proclaimed baroness and did the research for the lineage and she's ati true baroness and goig for them on the pressure more.

debting weed oval window per seconds to play -- getting rid of her in some point and telling her she had to go to the galapagos island and conquer it and god was telling her to go to the galapagos and become an empress. >> each person heads there build ago utopia and each one of the individuals has a different idea what that means, but how do you think that seeking paradise can lead to ex-people outcomes from coming undone? >> yeah, exactly what we said. utopia is a subjective term and everybody is a different idea of what it is and also is constantly in flux with what's happening and the baroness shows

up and her idea of the utopia announcing to everyone that's great is she wants to turn this tiny island in the southern part of the galapagos into miami. .... she carries a gun. she carries a knife. she carries a whip. she throws hot soup at people. [laughter] various things happen the book. that is herer idea of utopia isn miami. sola when she makes those plans announces that intention things really start getting dicey for

everybody.in >> one of the first things i read about the book before read the book was that some compared it to agatha christie. i have to admit i'm a huge agatha christie fan i'm like i don't know. [laughter] you did it. this is an awesome mystery. and for me, what was so fascinating because i've not read a ton of historical narrative nonfiction. you had to take these primary resources and weave it. you have scandalous elements, sex, the mystery, and then you have these details and then you have the history and the facts, how do you bounce that as a writer? >> would erratic nonfiction i'm not allowed to make up anything. whichn is often people lament te whole historical record we cannot make up dialogue. we cannot make up events.

in this book all the dead people did exactly what i wanted them to do fortunately, does not always work out that way it. [laughter] luckily i had primary source of andhero i needed to write it lia novel. when you have that kind of detail, and dialogue people write memoirs you have access to at their thinking. what their facial expressions work. what the responses were to people luckily people this book did write memoirs very colorful, very intimate. i have a wonderful access to the most interior topics and is writing the book. >> you had access to a lot of primary resources. obviously it start with this headline online and you're telling me earlier about a how u got to touch these archives. these writings of these individuals from so long ago. i guess, what was the most surprising thing you uncovered in the archival things not

giving away anything in the book. >> are so many of surprising things. id think the depths of fear that people started feeling when the baroness was escalating her antics i should say unbalanced behavior. frederick ritter and hines whitmer, the two sort of command of the island to did not really like each other banded together and said we need to take action here they would send letters to the american explorers were also fastening part of the book and say this is what is happening. if you hear of anything bad it's this woman'sli responsibility bt we don't know what were doing are youto going to come back? are you going to help us? they went to the governor of the glascow since it would you please compare and examine this will machines a psychiatric exec ua should pray she is the place and of course the governor of the galapagos does and she seduces the governor of galapagos. so there is kind of no winning

for them and just the fear you could feel the fear and in one case number frederick ritter wrote a lot of his letters by hand you could see the pencil breaking he was just, the emotion was coming through and physically affecting him. >> okay so i read you took yourself to the galapagos house that for you?od >> pour me i had to go to the galapagos islands for research. it was wonderful it takes two full days from the accident you, trains, automobiles to get there. at the time with these people live there in the 19 thursday and thursdays it was uninhabited people try to settle there and failed it was a daunting experience we are going to try to do something everyone else is literally failed to do. i stillbo primitive today about

one or 50 people of their. there is spotty or wi-fi it's wy rugged terrain is not a very lush island has one freshwater spring which was also a challenge back then. there were only two bars which is also a challenge. [laughter] i did visit both of them. [laughter] but it really gave me an appreciation for how difficult it was for these people in the 1930s to go there without any modern convenience. no pathways were cleared. there are hacking away their own paths to make a living situation for themselves especially midori is suffering from multiple sclerosis frederickwh is like hager mind was wrong with your mind you're not healed yet. very unsympathetic to her it really gave me a newfound appreciation for how these people were so determined and to do as well as they did which of course not everybody does well there is some murder. [laughter]

but really a while these people were very brave. >> so it seems to me the island itself is a character in this story. and i guess as you were reading these primary resources and i guess stitching together the narrative here, tell me about how, what kind of character issued questioner. >> question. >> a dark beast. she is a wishy print know she's a very mysterious. i was a she's a bit of a witch. everybody and even native ecuadorian things haunted back then they would not go there after dark. it has incredible history the galapagos first penal colony so there are all kinds of nefarious characters there.

very first inhabitant was a pirate and anybody who encountered him would be like this guy has on vermin literally dripping from his body and the environment were hanging off the hairs on him he was not a pleasant sightsee eventually murdered some captives would come to the island and he fled. there's all this lower about him when frederick and dori first arrived there they stayed in the pirate caves were patrick watson had lived. dori spent the rest of that's our time thinking she could be murdered by the spirit of this pirate. so it was sort of this haunting opening and a pervasive sense of fear that follows people around wherever they go on this island. plexus is set in an interesting period of world history and the great depression and the lead up to the second world war. how did those historical markers affect the events and the new

society thesese folks are building? >> restarted 19209 right when the stock market crash the global economy is collapsing. hitler is ascending power one of the characters had been a high-rankingci official and was desperate to flee germany partly because of that he had many political enemies and so when they arrived on flory anna all of these external factors are happening around them. it really plays a shoot with the american explorers theirlo wealy american explorers who were untouched by the great depression. they got their stocks out in time. they were find it became a past pastime for wealthy americans during this period to build these enormous yachts kind of like scientific floating laboratories and charlie's expeditions down to the galapagos islands to gather flora and fauna. when this happened the first

when it came down was a man by the name of eugene mcdonald was the founderat of zenith radio. had no idea it was inhabited run into fredrickson dori. when he gets back to the united states speaks about his discovery of a modern-day adam and eve which of course sets the stage for other people to start coming for the entire world to start paying attention to these really interesting eccentric characters that are on the island. >> i have a question about your process again. having access to these primary resources in this narrative nonfiction that reads like a novel. it is so cool. how do youin structure a story without leaning too far and fictionalize in? how do you build that? >> first for the structure i am kind of a psychotic outline it out of there is another it. [laughter] my outline for this book was about 140,000 words.

the book itself is about 80000 words so you're not getting war and peace it's only 85000 words. i basically carve a book out of an outline and the outline kind of allows you to see where you can use the fictionalize techniques without breaking the barriers of nonfiction. i'm not allowed or change chronology or fabricate any events you can use things like foreshadowing this might happen that might not know this was going to happen. you can use cliffhangers. >> which you use beautiful requests the berta shows up at your doorstep with a gun and chapter. that kind of thing. fiction and stay with him and it's wonderful when you find a bit of history that really lends itself to a novel treatment. >> if someone were to be interested in riding in this way and exploit it for the first

sample would be a piece of advice you getk them? >> i would say if you are a fiction reader, anybody's going to attempt to write a book i'm sure reads widely of all genre. look at his storyg, that has a beginning, middle, and the stakest rising, is there conflt your characters? have enough primary source to have them come to life. one of my favorite writers pete dexter says with the writers to keep playing the same record over and over but that needle lands in a different place each time. if you find what your niche is and your interest is and it's probably not going to vary too much you'll find different angles and different ways into that. i would just explore that. >> yes, absolutely. aside from were not going to give away the whodunit here. [laughter]

but what you think your readers will find most surprising or shocking without giving it away? >> sure. it is a fun book i will say that it is fun. what i want people to come away from it is to have a discussion about what they thinknk happene. it's not often a nonfiction you get to write a whodunit like a legitimate murderan mystery there's so many suspects are there so many conflicting stories in fact one of the challenges of the book wasn't reconciling the two main memoirs.s and they lied, they withhold the tr, they contradict each other. to me i always think what you choose to lie about what you choose to omit says as much aboutt you and your intentions s what you present as the truth. so going through their memoirs to figure out who was lying when and why was a fascinating puzzle piecee i want readers to say hee is my theory. here's my theory and have a debate about that. it's a murder/mystery that has

endured for almost 100 years. i think is one of the most fascinating murder mysteries over time it, really. >> i think you're right on that you sent a fun book out it's an absolute joyride. it is absolute just wonderful. there's an upcoming film directed by ron howard called eden it's based on the same historical story. how do you feel about the story making its way to the big screen? >> i wish it were based on my book. [laughter] i wish ron howard and i were close personal friends. but, what happened was i wanted to write this book for very long time apparently ron howard is also been obsessed with the story for very long time i've just finished touring for mynd novelwa and got the news ron howard was filming in australia for this book were for this story starting voss and sweeney and kobe.

so it was a moment where i resembled the scream i had to quickly finish my draft, edit, rewrite, copy many times compile 70 pages of endnotes and do it within a period of months my national public date was may of 2025 i lost eight months of work on this book to try to coincide and meet the movie which just premiered at the film festival. unfortunately there's no trailer yet. there's no theatrical release date or streaming release date. i hope peoplese will read the te story' before the seat rods i'mm sure wonderful fictionalized version. >> honestly do not get me wrong i love a movie, i work here. [laughter] it's a movieie already. i sent you earlier, these people are so strange. these characters are so awesome

and realized weirdos so i guess if you had to pick a favorite character is there when you would choose out of this cast of crazies? [laughter] >> i mean i would have to go to the baroness who i was delighted to report more than embodies her nickname. she doesn't build a semblance of her miami style hotel she calls at the hacienda. one american tourists visited declared it was a festering sex complex. maybe that was in that trip advisor. [laughter] but she is absolutely -- one of things that love to do is digging up stories of women who arer, forgotten, written out of history or c never came to ligh. she is possibly one of the most

complicated ones i would actually love to pay a real psychiatrist to read this book and say can you please a diagnosis woman? she is fascinating to me in a way she was a strange feminist she was brazen didn't care she went after what she wanted and really did not at all. so these characters face some extreme circumstances. i have a background in theater. i think one of the things in your acting do not judge the character you are playing because they don't think they are th' village might right? for me when you are writing the character special circumstances may beat with the delusion some of them had, i guess do you feel

the for your characters even though there's an violent outcomes in some strange choices? >> yes absolutely. when you i spend this much time with characters and i worked on this book for very long time. and also, let me point out the obvious writing is a very solitary profession. often i will spend the entire date not speaking a word out loud the old people i'm talking to the dead people in writing about. so you become very close to them. they just become very dear to you even ifc, they are eccentric and obviously have their flaws. but when you have a chance to really read people's writings and get access to their thoughts and to imagine how you might behave in a situation where it is so extreme that really humanize them for me. i did feel and i should say sympathy for theba baroness and for all that at one time or another. >> sure.

i guess for me, i really enjoyed the mystery of it all. that is what it comes down too. -what makes a good mystery? because this isat great for me t for you it makes a good mystery? >> he went to cast the characters were everybody's guilty of something. and if it one of the comparisons was made too and then they were none the famous island mystery. even if none of them are guilty of murder, they were all guilty of something. and i think when the playing field is that open and it could go anyway it makes for a rich discussion. that is an allure. >> that is great. so i just want to go ahead and turn this to the audience and see if anybody has any questions

for average. there is a microphone right there if you wanted to utilize that would be great for the crowd. does anybody have any questions for abbott? >> i will repeat it. >> it has to do with the process present a story like this so many primary resources, it must be overwhelming. as a story line to show up or do you have to mold it? if you do mold it was there one really juicy piece of information you really wanted to get in there and it did not fit the story line? >> was left on the editing floor. >> that was a very good question. no. [laughter] in this one eight people living on this tiny island you're going to get i petty squabbles. what i did leave on the cutting room floor with a bunch of the petty squabbles. i mean i kept all the big dramatic murderous and mystery.

but i let you borrow my donkey no i didn't. and that kind of thing. you expect that kind of thing i did a little of that to show the escalation of the seats began of the automatic city that developed. but asui far as living the juicy stuff, it is all in there. [laughter] >> anybody else have any questions? [inaudible] [inaudible] you said the two main characters have of book a memoir because the baroness have a memoir also? what she did not have a memoir. i would've loved to gotten my hands on the baroness memoir. she wrote many letters that i had translated. >> had there been other books about her or other articles that you use besides the letters

themselves? city discover article i could find was very helpful to me i employed researchers in paris, vienna, german researchers. who all scoured all of the papers large and small to see if there's any mention of these characters including the baroness and of course it's him and go deep into her genealogy for me all that was very helpful in terms of piecing together this character who surrounded herself push it a wonderful mythologized or love to invent stories about herself it was great fun to sort of say was this true? was this true in fact checker a little bit. not having her memoir and every other bit of information i could find out about her. [inaudible] >> out of the two main characters come to find the galapagos island meeting why did they go in there and have another place? >> is a very good question.e

especially for new and is a think about the galapagos is not a lush tropical sandy shore swinging palm trees and vegetation beautiful. it is no miami. it is a volcanic island covered in lava rock. very unappealing. not very fertile. a lot ofd people who'd been thee before i think it was o the firt director of the zoological society said it looked as though lucifer heaved up a bunch of rock. and that was the galapagos islands. why would they pick this? i think frederick went to the challengeom can i become what i meant to be? it at least had one source of freshwater they thought of it go up intobe the highlands would he a good attempt at making a garden and having drinking water. so they picked an island state

may be possibly could have sustained themselves on. it was a challenge but of course they worked it out for a while. >> the infamous stories that came from the island beforehand i think made it part possibly part of the allure of going there. >> yes right before frederick and dori showed up there's a group of norwegians that tried to settle there. they even built a little house on the bay. but the time they showed up, fled.ad >> honestly it's a gothic way to start the book. and sod yes. >> you become entranced with the story, how do you go about the process of officially determining is there enough material out there to write a story? and then i am curious if you ever followed up and frustratingly found there's not enough. p >> answer the secondrs part of e

question first. absolutely, it happens all the time. i havel a folder full of story ideas on my computer i am never going to be able to a book for the primary source materials just out there. and maybe it might make a good novel when they were i could fill in the blanks of my imagination i'm not going to be them as a nonfiction book. everybody out there was to be written about some day write memoirs start writing them now so people can write about you and 100 years and how crazy you are. [laughter] or wonderful or whatever. thinking write memoirs for people who are going to come after us. but for this one i knew right away very quickly there were two great memoirs from two of the women. from there i said i didn't archival surgeon oral cap which is where you go to find your archival sources survivors around the world discovered there is a true of archives of

the university of southern california and other trove at the sony institution that the explorers had kept. especially george allen hancock oil local. family owned out in los angeles. hancock park is named after his family he was the most important exploree that would not come to the galapagos and have files and files of these people including the letter said said to him. once i got a sense that i have this voice and this was at this point you in this point of p viw it just all started to come together i could see also reports there is scientists admitted their impressions. no bunch of different perspectives you know you can make the narrative come together. >> any other questions? >> yes. >> which of the three exiled groups did you find the most sympathetic or entertaining or

shocking to write about? and conversely which of the three groups. [inaudible]ll >> they also price me at different times for different reasons. let me start the whitmer family. hines and margaret whitmer who came after over dori and frederick they heardan about dorian frederick wanted to follow in their footsteps. margaret was five months pregnant she came over. this woman gave l birth all aloe at midnight in the dark surrounded by it like wild animals like on the galapagos islands were nobody was around. it's kind of that act of bravery was astounding to me. really touching her strength was incrediblele. and of course dorian frederick. i think what is surprising there the dynamics of the relationship are constantly shifting. frederick could be cruel to dori and dori starts to get sick of

it. this lament was like please let me accompany you for i will do anything i'll be your handmaiden by your side, starting at sick of him and starts acting in very interesting ways. and then of course the baroness. [laughter] one of my favorite things about her according to margaret the woman who gave birth alone, she said the baroness invited both hines and frederick to her wigwam. one or both of them might take some point. ime love them all at various tis and for different reasons. >> any other questions? yes. >> the two guys that were with the baroness how long they put up with that? i am only halfway through the book. [laughter] did you have letters to support that? from them or their memoirs? >> yes one of them rudolph

lawrence that fairness had two o lovers she came with rudolph lawrence and robert phillips. robert phillips was her preferred a lever the man she called her husband. rudolph lawrence had been her business partner in paris and her lover got demoted. she would spend that's our time pitching these men against each other. rudolph lawrence a lot of information comes from dorian margaret memoirs because lawrence would show up at their various residences and be like i cannotsh take this woman anymore she did this, she did that go to the other place and save got to help me. let me stay. here i need to get back to germany. give me away from this woman. both of them their memoirs are e contradictory but both of them report on how it rudolph lawrence would show up and describe the behavior he was enduring. a lot of that was documented also with george allen hancock he'd written letters to hancock about that.

in the event of hancock's entourage witnessed a lot of it. there's a couple sources for that. i do not know why he put up with her for so long. i guess that's one of the mysteries. [laughter] >> there is a recurring theme in the book about surviving in isolation in different ways. butth i have a question, do you thinkro these characters were doomed from the start? or do you think they ever had a real chance of achieving the utopia they wanted so desperately? >> it's a very good question. i think the people who arrived there for the simplest purest reasons have the best chance and they are the ones, without giving away spoilers they are the ones who survived sort of indoor. i think jewelry, or the great things about dori i did not have to do a lot of foreshadowing as an author she f did the

foreshadowing for me. i do not have to be heavy-handed my editor was like a jute cutback doors of foreshadowing? this woman is dangerous on every step. i think she talks frequently about how people were not there. people aren't there for the rightre reasons. >> survivor. the book has been compared to the survivor by the wall street journal in the "washingtonon post." if kting piece of history. but yes it is for the right reasons. >> absolutely. i'm so appreciative of your time. thank you so much to the harrisonburg book festival were thrilled to be a partner in that this year. everybody needs to get this book it's absolutely a page turner it

is thrilling. as an agatha christie fan i was happy it was like having a new best friend to read. >> thank you very much thank you everybody forve coming. thank you. >> given up for abbott everybody. [applause] weekends on cspan2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday in american history tv documents america's story. on sunday book tv brings you the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for cspan2 comes in these television companies and more including mid coat. ♪ where are you going? or maybe a better question is how far you want to go? and how fast you want to get there? now we're getting somewhere. so let's go. let's go faster. let's go