book a a because i'm old enough to remember, remember, remember the in the disco era, it was it became the burn, baby burn policy. so that's the hell with them. they're not getting in to fight that fire. if it had been if there were, it was going to be a much tougher call if there were lives that were going to be at risk, if it was just the office building burning to the ground like the tramps said, burn, baby, burn, let it burn. if it's housing. and we have got families, kids, etc., that that would be a different story. but in the course of the book, i describe this and why i wouldn't let the moscow fire department in to fight a fire so well. i think on behalf of everyone here, i want to commend you on your service. i know you served a great personal cost and have been a dedicated to the country and this service was not particularly easy and it was very complicated during covid. so thank you very much.

and i want to thank everybody for showing up today. we are going to have a little reception here and. there will be a book signing or john will, answer any additional questions. you have. so thank you very much for coming. >> if you missed your favorite nonfiction author, you can find all of our programming online at booktv.org. just use the search bar at the top of the page. >> good afternoon, everyone. welcome to midtown cinema ma. my name is stuart landon, director of community engagement here at the sin a ma, i'll be youron host and moderator for ts afternoon's program. thank you all foran joining us. zero so -- we're so happy that you're here, and we hope that you enjoy this event with ab -- abbott kahler. much

for making your way here to midtown cinema. for those who are in the know, a couple of months ago we took some water in here at the cinema and had to take that moment not only do some renovations to for that flooding damage but also reinvent the lobby. so this friday, october 18th, we're going to have our grand, which is really bright. it's a little exciting. yay! an actual lobby with actual bathrooms. all the actual. so it's been it's been a journey and we're really appreciative the hard work that the contractors are doing and our employees are doing here to get ready for that big grand. so for those who are members of the midtown cinema, you actually will get free movies on friday to celebrate the grand opening is really great for those of you who aren't yet members you got a chance to join which is great and you of course can come flick that night as well. we'll have live music on our new stage that is in the front as

well, which is really exciting. lastly, we encourage you to come away with a signed copy of eden undone after the event, abbott will be sticking around afterwards for a book signing here at the and then she'll be at the bookstore from 4 to 5 p.m. as well for us signing. so book sales of course provided by midtown scholar bookstore who a great partner of the cinema now it's my honor to introduce our author today abbott kahler is the new york times bestselling author of sin in the second city american rose liar liar, temptress, soldier, spy, the ghosts of eden park and edward edgar award finalist, best fact, crime and a novel where you end. native of philadelphia. she lives in new york city and in greenport, new york. she formerly wrote as karen abbott and her new book, which we are here for today, is titled eden a true story of sex, murder and utopia. at the dawn of world war, two

hampton sides writes, there's a dash of conrad a bit of hitchcock notes of melville, darwin and robinson crusoe, and certainly more than a whiff of lord of the flies, but really eden, london completely its own thing. bizarre, mesmerize and completely tragic. compellingly tragic. kaler confronts an essential truth about those who ditched civilization. try as we might. humans cannot elude the tyranny of our own nature. now, hollywood has got this caught the eye of hollywood and ron howard is adapting the same to the big screen in a movie called eden, starring jude law, which will be coming out, we believe, at end of the year or maybe in 2025. so it's an honor to host abbott here at the harrisburg book festival here at midtown cinema. so without further ado, please join me in giving a warm round of applause. yeah, yeah.

thank you everybody for coming out. thank you, stewart. for that introduction and i really appreciate your enthusiasm for jude law and for this story in general. oh, yes. but i can't even tell you how many movies we played here with jude in it. so he's definitely been a lot of wonderful independent movies. so let's just jump right into it. in eden undone, you focus this group of eccentric ex, i guess. i think that's a kind word for these people very word. and i find them fascinating. well, unpack them in a second. and of course, they take a pilgrimage to the galapagos. now, what first sparked your interest in their stories? so i've been wanting to write the story for a very long time. i think about 12 years now. and i one day scrolling through newspaper archives dot com as writers and maybe some of you do and i was looking for something else and i happened this tabloid

passage a headline that was so bizarre that i had to read it about two or three times to just like that i read that or my hallucinating. so i'm going to read that passage you just so you can sort of appreciate what was thinking in that moment. oh, a 1941 passage from the san francisco examiner, quote was dr. ritter with his steel teeth poisoned paradise was baroness louise known as crazy panties, who ruled the island with gun in love, murdered by one of her love slaves after. she had driven the other to his death. and why is fraud or going back to what she once called hell's volcano? the mystery of the galapagos island germany covets to be solved at last. so it was sort of a record scratch moment where i everything stopped around me and i abandoned any other idea i was thinking about and i this is the book i wanted to write, but my publisher at the time said, no, we want american history with american characters i wrote other books, years passed, but

my heart mind always stayed on the story. and finally i took out the publisher who actually published this book, the head of crown, and just said, you know, this isn't a european, this isn't an american story. this is a human story. who among us hasn't wanted to ditch our lives and go somewhere, start anew and and try something simpler? who has it wanted to get away from while mistakes they made and just go where nobody knows them and they could just start over. so to me, it was this sort of timeless human impulse. yeah. i mean, okay, so that that headline introduces a lot of the characters. this is a crazy cast of characters that you are. if haven't read the book, you're in for a treat. it is they are absolutely bizarre. humans i mean all i would say they're all very human. they're not they're not character chairs or anything like that. but so tell me a little bit about this cast of characters and who's who, the story centered on? well, we start with a doctor, frederick ritter. he was war one veteran.

he was very scarred by that. after the war, he went to work in a berlin hydrotherapy therapeutic institute where they actually had some progressive ideas the healing powers, powers of water, raw food, diet. but he took his ideas to an extreme. he believed that gums become -- enough to substitute for teeth. didn't think he needed teeth. he decided was going to live to be 150 years old. probably not surprisingly, he was a big devotee of frederick beecher, and he did not civilization. he wanted to abandon and go somewhere and sort of hone his philosophical ideas and become a world renowned philosopher and. before he did this, of course, he extracted all of his teeth and, had them replaced with a set of steel dentures which which you is kind of i want to see do go on a steel ventures but you know in a sign of all the adversaries to come he did

not account for the fact that his gums were going to shrink and the steel dentures wouldn't stay in any way at hospital he meets dorie starch. who is this woman? she's 26 years old. she is suffering from multiple sclerosis and every other doctor tells her that her condition is incurable except for frederick. he kind of, you know, says, of course, can cure this. it's all in the power of mind. if you just think your multiple sclerosis away, you will be healed. you know, of course. and she's intrigued by this, i think partly because she was trapped in this marriage with a man she didn't love. in her memoir, which is remarkable, was published in 1935. she actually talks how the sex was boring. and she's very intrigued by this doctor. and she begged him, let her accompany him to the galapagos so they can sort of do this together. and writes in her memoir that she thinks that she is the only whom frederick did not truly despise. so quite a ringing endorsement for their relationship.

it's off to a good start. yeah. okay. so that's the books. you introduce those characters first? yes. and then the cast of characters just gets more and more intriguing. and i want to ask a little bit about the baroness, which is probably favorite character crazy panties. yeah, crazy panties. and, and her role in this kind of bizarre narrative, you know, what, what fascinates you about her character. well, i that she you know what happens is frederick dorie are down there another family things are calm but it's but it's still the attention is building and you're like well passive boy what could possibly go wrong next and the baroness is the answer to that question when the story starts. she is a venus woman. she's living in paris. and if you've ever heard anything about this story, which is known kind of as the galapagos affair for people who have heard about it before, she's always described a self-proclaimed baroness. so baroness, i actually did the research into her lineage, and she is a true authentic

baroness. granted the title through her grandfather who got it during the suppression war and was quite a she knew eight languages. she was this sort of paris socialite who seduced men and women alike. she was married to a french hero. she partied. he didn't really care. i think he wanted it rid of it. get rid of her at some point and she heard a voice telling her that she had to go to the galapagos island and conquer it. and the voice was god. she believed god was telling her to go to the islands and become the galapagos. and she had heard about frederic and dory and the other people who were starting to go to this island, floriana and just decided to bump her way there. so, you know, each one of these folks heads to floriana. but the idea building a utopia and i think each one of those individuals seems to have different idea of what that means. but how do you think seeking

paradise can lead to such outcomes as your title indicates with eden coming undone? yeah, i mean. well, exactly what you utopia such a subjective term everybody has a different idea of what it is and i think it also is constantly in flux, depending on what's happening to you. right. and the shows up and her idea of a utopia as she announces to everybody is at great dismay is that she wants to turn floriana this tiny island in the southern part of the galapagos into miami she wants to make a miami resort to lure american tourist. and of course fredrik ritter who just wants to study his philosophy. and margaret hines and hines wittmer, who was other quiet family living there, are appalled and terrified about what she's going to do. and she's sort made no bones about the fact that she's not afraid to use violence to get to get which carries a gun she does carry she carries gun she carries a knife she carries a whip. she throws soup at people,

various things in the book. but but she shows up and that's her intention is that's her idea of of a utopia is miami on floreana so you know when she makes those plans and announces that intention, things really start getting dicey for. everybody. yeah. so, okay, so one of the first things i read about the book before i read the book was that some folks have compared it to agatha christie and i have to admit, i'm a huge christie fan. and i was like, i don't know, you did it this a awesome mystery. and for me, what was so fascinating because i have not read a ton of, you know, historical narrative nonfiction, which and you had to take these primary resources and weave it into this. so here's my question. you have the scandalous elements, the sex, the murder, the mystery, and then you have at these sensational details, i

guess, and then you have the history, the facts. how do you balance that as a as a writer? well, what are you writing? nonfiction. this i'm not allowed to make up. you know, i can't make up, which is often we often nonfiction people lament that we're beholden to the historical. we can't make up dialog. we can't make up well in this book. all of the dead, people did exactly what i wanted to do. fortunately, does always work out that way. but but you know, luckily i had the kind of primary source material i needed to write it like a when you have that kind of detail, when you have dialog, when people write memoirs and you have access to they were thinking what their facial expressions were, what their responses were to. and luckily the people in this book did write memoirs that were very, very intimate. and so i had wonderful access to their most interior when i was writing the book. so you had access to a lot of primary resources. so obviously you started with

this headline online and then you went and you and you were telling me actually about how you got to touch these archives, these these writings of these individuals from from so long ago. and i guess what was the most surprising thing that you uncovered in those archival things without giving anything away in the book? yeah. oh, god. there are so many surprising things, i think when the depth of fear that people started feeling the baroness was escalate and her antics and her or her, i should say unbalanced behavior. frederick gritter and. hines witmer the two sort of men of the island who didn't really like other banded together and we need to take some action here. and they would send letters. the american explorers, who were also kind of a fascinating part of the book and say, this is what's happening. if you hear of anything bad, floreana, it's this woman's responsibility. we don't know what we're doing.

are you going to come back? are you going to help us? they wrote to the governor of the galapagos and said, would you please come and examine this woman? she needs a psychiatric examination. she should be placed a sanatorium and know, of course, the governor of the galapagos does, and she seduces the governor of a galapagos. so there was kind of no winning them. and just the fear could really feel the fear. in one case. i remember frederick ritter wrote a lot of his letters by hand, and you could just see the pencil breaking where he he was just sort of emotion was coming through and physically, you know, affecting him. well. so the okay so i read you you took a pilgrimage yourself to the galapagos. yeah how was that for you? i mean, it was it was oh, god, poor me. you know, i had had to go to a golf course islands for research and but it was wonderful. i mean, it takes two full days from new york city planes, trains automobiles, ferries to get there first place and

floreana is at the time when these people live there in the 1930s it was uninhabited people had tried to settle there and failed which sort of was a daunting experience for them to know like, oh, we're to try to do something that literally everybody else has doing. it's, it's still primitive today, about 150 people live there. there's spotty wi-fi. it's very rugged terrain. it's not a very lush island. floriana only has one freshwater spring, which was also a challenge back then. there were only two bars, which was also a challenge. i did visit both of them, but but, but, but it really me an appreciation for how difficult it for these people in the 1930s to go there without any modern conveniences and not only no monarch convenience, but no pathways were cleared. they were hacking away their own paths to make any living situation for themselves. and especially dory, who's suffering from sclerosis with fredric, who's basically like,

hey, your mind, what's wrong with your mind? you're not healed yet, you know, very to her and it just really gave me a newfound appreciation for how these people were so determined to do as well as they did, which course not everybody does. well, there's there are some murder, but really it just really, you know, wow you know, these people were very brave. yeah. so so floriana. it seems to me that the island is a character in this in this story. and that and i guess that that as you were reading these primary resources, reading and and and i guess stitching together this this initial that the narrative here. tell me about how what kind of what kind of character is floriana florin is a dark beast. she's a witchy no floriana is a very mysterious wouldn't say i would say floriana is a bit of a witch you know it's everybody

native ecuadorians today. i think floriana is haunted back then they wouldn't go there after dark. it has incredible history. it was the galapagos first penal colony. so there are all kinds of nefarious characters. its very first inhabitant was a pirate by the name of patrick watkins and. anybody who encountered him would be like this, guy has vermin, literally dripping from his body. like the vermin were hanging off the hairs on him. he was not a pleasant sight. he eventually murdered some captives that they had come the island and he fled. and and so there was all this lore about him. and when and dorie first arrived there, they in the pirate caves where frederick excuse me, where patrick had lived. and he was the rest of her time in floriana, i think that she was going to be murdered by the spirit of this pirate. so sort this haunting opening and a pervasive, pervasive of fear that just follows people

around wherever. they go on this island. yeah. so this is set in an interesting period of world history and the great depression and lead up to the to the second world war. how do those how did those historical markers affect the events in this new society that these folks are building? yeah. so i mean, we start in 1929, right, when the stock market crashed. so the global economy is collapsing, hitler is ascending the power. we're at the fall. the weimer republic, one of the characters, hines wittmer, had been a high official in the republic and was was really desperate to flee germany partly of that he had many political enemies and the rising nazi party and so would they arrive on an floriana. you know all these external factors are happening around them and it really to with the american explorers these very wealthy american explorers who were untouched by the great you know, they got their stock down

in time. they were fine and it became a pastime for wealthy americans during period to build these yachts kind of like scientific floating laboratories and chartered these expeditions down to the galapagos island to gather exotic flora and fauna and when this happened, first one who came down was a man by the name eugene macdonald was the founder of zenith radio, had no idea that floriana was inhabited into frederick and dorie. it runs, and when he goes back, the united states speaks about his discover of a modern day adam and eve, which of course sets the stage for other people to start coming to floreana for the entire world to start paying attention to these really interesting centric that are on the island. i have a question about your process. again, you're having access to these primary resources and this narrative nonfiction. i mean it reads like a novel and it is it's it's so cool how. how do you how do you structure

a story without kind of leaning too far and fictionalizing like how do how do how do you build that? well, first, for the structure, you know, i'm a i'm kind of as psychotic outline or i don't know if there's another word for it. i i buy outline for this book was about 140,000 words. the book itself is about 85,000 words. so don't worry. you're getting like a war and peace tome. it's only 85,000 words. but i. but i basically carve a book out of an outline, and the outline kind of allows to see where you can use fictionalized techniques without without breaking barriers of nonfiction. so as i said, i'm not allowed to make up any dialog and not allowed to change or fabricate any. but you can use things like foreshadow thing oh, you know this happen they didn't yet know that this was going to happen. you can use cliffhangers i mean which you is beautiful thank but you're sure the baroness shows at your doorstep with a gun and

chapter, you know. yeah, that kind of thing. so, yeah. so you can, you can use know the techniques of fiction and stay within and it's wonderful when you find a bit of history that really lends itself to a novel as a treatment. yeah so if somebody were to be interested in writing in this way and they're exploring for the first time, what would be a piece of advice you would give them, i would say, look for, if you are a fiction reader, you know, i'm sure anybody who's going to attempt to write a book, i'm sure reads widely of all of all genres, but look for a story that has a, you know, a beginning, middle and end, the stakes rising. is there conflict what do your characters have? have you know enough primary source material to really make them to life and would just sort of, you know, see one of my favorite writers, pete dexter, always says, you know, with with writers, they keep playing same record over and over. but the needle lands at a different place each time. so you find what you're you find, what your niche is.

and what your interest is, and is probably never going to vary too much, but you'll find different angles and different ways in to that. and so i would just say explore that. yeah, absolutely. so what do you think readers mean aside from, you know, we're not going to give away, you know, the whodunit here, but the what do you think readers will most surprising or shocking about the story without giving? sure. well, i mean of the things i it's a fun book i will say that since it's fun it's it's it's and what i want people to really come away from it is to have a discussion about what they think happened. it's not often nonfiction that you get to write a whodunit like legitimate murder mystery. and there's so many suspects. there's so many conflicting stories. in fact, one of the challenges of the book was reconciling the two main characters memoirs. they lie, you know, withhold truth. they lie, they contradict each other. and, you know, to me, i always think that what you choose lie about and what you choose to omit says much about you and

your intentions is what present as the truth. and so sort of going through their memoirs and figuring out who was lying, when and why was kind of a fascinating puzzle piece. and i want readers to say, here's my theory. you know, my theory and sort of having a debate that and it's a murder mystery who's you know law has endured for almost 100 years and i don't i think it's one of the most fascinating murder mysteries of our time really. well, i think you're right on there and would say that you said it was a fun book. i would say it's an absolute joy ride, frankly. it's really it's just wonderful. so there's an upcoming film directed by ron howard called eden, and it's based on the same historical story. how do you feel about the making its way to the big screen well? i wish it were based. my book. i like to say that i wish ron howard and i were very close. first of all, friends. but what happened was, you know, i've wanted to write this book for a very long time. apparently, ron howard has also

been obsessed with the story for a very long time. i had just finished touring for my novel and got the news that ron howard was filming australia for this book, for the story starring jude law, sydney sweeney, ana de armas and vanessa kirby. and so it was a moment where i think, i resembled, you know, the and i had to quickly finish my draft, edit, rewrite, copy edit many times compile 70 pages of notes and do it within a very period of months. my initial pop date in may of 2025. so i lost eight months of work on this book to try to coincide and meet movie which just premiered at toronto film festival and unfortunately there's no trailer yet. there's no theatrical release date yet. our streaming release date yet. but i, you know, i, i hope people will read the true story before they see ron's, i'm sure wonderful, fictionalized

version. but they can't. i mean, honestly, don't get me wrong, love a movie. i work here, but they this is such it's a movie already it just these you can't i don't know if it got i was you earlier these people are so strange they're these characters are so awesome and fully fully realized weirdos but the so i guess that if you had to pick a favorite character is there one that you would choose of this this cast of crazies. i mean i'd have to go with the who who i was delighted to report more than embodies her of crazy pan he's she does build a semblance of her hotel her miami hotel she calls it the hacienda paradise so and one american tourist visited declared that it was quote, a festering sex complex. so i get back maybe that was the tripadvisor tripadvisor report.

but but no, she she she's absolutely know one of my things i enjoy doing about history is digging up stories of women who are forgotten or written out of history or just never, never sort of came light and and she is possibly one of the most complicated ones. you know i would actually love to pay a real psychiatry to read to read this book and be like, can you please diagnose this woman? you know? but she's she's to me in a way, she was this of strange proto feminist. she was brazen. she did not care. she went after she wanted and really did not did not give at all yet at all okay so these characters face pretty extreme circumstances and so i have a background in theater, right? and i think that one of the thing is when you're acting is that you really you don't judge character that you are playing because. they're not they don't think they're the villain.

they don't think they're the or even they don't necessarily think they're well, everyone probably thinks of the good guy, right but i guess for me when you're writing, when it comes to sympathy for a character, especially in these extreme circumstances and maybe with the delusion that some of them had, i guess that. do you feel sympathy for your characters that are you know even though there's violent i outcome's some strange choices yeah absolutely i mean when when you spend as much time with with characters and i've worked on this book for a very long time and also me just point out the obvious writer writing is very solitary, a profession. often i will spend the entire day, literally not speaking a word loud. and the only people i'm talking to are the dead people that i'm writing about. so you've become very close to them. you know, they become very dear, you in a way, even if they are centric, obviously have their flaws. but it's when you when you have a chance to really read people's

and get access to their thoughts and to imagine how might behave in a situation where it's so extreme it really sort of humanized them for me and i did feel empathy and well, i should say sympathy at least for the baroness and for all of them at one time or another. sure. yeah. of the i guess that for me i, i enjoyed the mystery of it all. i mean that's really what it comes down to. and i think that what, what for you about it what makes a good mystery that's because this this is great for me but what for makes a good mystery. oh, i think you want a cast of characters where everybody's guilty something you know if you look at you know one of the one of the comparison was made to and then there were none. agatha christie's island mystery. and, you know, even if none them were guilty of murder, they were all guilty of something. and and think that, you know, it

would just sort of win the playing field. is that open. and it could go any way. is it just makes for a rich discussion and that's an allure. so i think that's what you want. that's great. so i just wanted to go ahead >> that's great. so i just wanted to to go ahead and turn this to the audience and see if anybody has any questions for abbott. there's a microphone right there if you wanted to utilize that, it would be probably great for the crowd. if anybody have any questions for abbott? yeah. >> [inaudible] >> i'll repeat it. >> it sort of has to do with -- [inaudible] when you've got a story like this and so many primary resources, does -- it must be if overwhelming, right? does the storyline just sort of show up, or do you have to sort of mold it? and if you do mold it, was there one really juicy piece off information that you reallyhe wanted to get in there, and it just didn't fit in the storyline in the. >> was there anything left on the edit room floor --

>> that's a very good question. no. [laughter] in this one because it's eight people living on this tiny island are, is you're going to to get petty squabbles. and what i did leave on the9 cutting room floor were a bunch of those. i kept all of the big, dramatic, you know, murderous and mystery, but, i mean, we kind of got to this point where it's, like, i met you boar -- borrow my docky, no, you didn't. and you expect that kind of thing. i did a little bit of that just to show how the seeds, you know, began of the animosity that develop can dod. but as far a as leaving the juiy stuff, it's t all in there. [laughter] >> anybody else have any questions? yes. >> actually, who two. the bare necessary -- baron's, you said the -- baroness, they

wrote a memory. did he also? >> he did not. unfortunately, i would have loved -- tote have gotten my hands on it. he wrote many letters that i had translated, yes. >> have there been other books about her or articles that you used besides the letters themselves? >> any newspaper article i could find, it was very helpful to me. i employed researchers in paris, vienna, german researchers. so -- who all scour ised all of the papers, large and small, to see if there was any mention of these characters including the baroness and, of course, had somebody go deep in her genealogy for me. all of that was helpful in terms of piecing together this character who surrounded herself with myth. she was a wonderful self-mythologizer and loved to invent stories about herself. so it was great fun to say was this true and fact check her a little bit. so i really just not having her

memory, i used every other concernpo memoir, i used every other bit of information i could find about her. >> and second half, how did the two main characters come to find the galapagos island, meaning why did hay go there? >> yeah. it's a very good question, and especially because if anybody knows anything about the gap goes, it's not this sandy-store -- shore, swinging palm trees, vegetation, beautiful concern exactly. it's no miami, right. s this volcanic islands covered in the lava rock, very unappealing, not very fertile, you know? a lot of people who had been there before talked about -- i think it wasas the first, direcr of the new york so lock call concern zoological society said it looked like a bunch of upheaved rock from hell. so why would they pick this? i think frederick wanted the challenge, you know in it was

sort of can i become the uber-mensch that i'm meant to be. and they did pick it because it had at least one source of fresh water, and they thought at least we'll have have a good attempt at making a garden and sustaining ourselves and drinking water. and they picked the one eye hand that they maybe, possibly could havebu sustained themselves on. it was a challenge but, of course, they worked it out for a while. yeah. >> and the infamous stories that came from the island beforehand also made it, i think, part of, possibly part of the assure? >> yeah. >> of going there? >>ah yeah. right before frederick and dory showed up, there was a up group of norwegians who had tried the settle there. they had even built a little house on the bay -- >> it's a great gothic way to

hoe up. >> is there enough material out this to to write a story. i'm curious if you with ever frustratingly found that there's not enough to tell -- >> yes. i'll answer the second part first, absolutely. it happens all the time. i have a folder full of story ideasen my computer that i'm never going to be able to do a book for because the primary source material is just not there. and maybe they might make a good novel one day where i can fill in the blanks with minaj mission -- imagination, but with i'm not going to be able to do them as a nonfiction book. everybody out there, write memoirs -- [laughter] start writing them now so people can write about you in a hundred years and how crazy you are. [laughter] or wonderful or whatever. but i'm just thinking about, you know, write memoirs for people who are going the to come after us. but for this one, i knew that

rightth away, very quickly, that there were two great memoirs from two of the women. and from there i said, okay, i can, i did an arkansas a kyle search in world cat which is where you find your with archival sources from libraries around t the world and discoverd a trove at the university of southern california and another trove at smithsonian institution that the explores had kept. especially george allan hancock who was an oil mogul. his family owned the bra la brea tar pit, hancock park is named after his family, and he was the most important explorer that would come to the galapagos during this time period. once i got a sense of, oh, i have this voice and this voice andl this point of view, it jut all started to come together. and i could see also reports their scientists had made of

their impressions. you've got a bunch of different perspectives, you know, that you can make the narrative come together. >> any other questions? if yes. >> so which of the three exiled groups did you find the most sympathetic or entertaining -- >> yeah. >> -- or shocking to write about? and conversely, which one of the three groups did you find -- [inaudible] >> yeah. you know, they all surprised me at different times for different reasons. lete me just start with the whitmer family. who came over after dory and frederick, they had heard about them and wanted the follow in their footstepses. margaret was five months pregnant when she came over. this woman gave birth, like, all alone at midnight in the dark surrounded by, like, wild animals on on the galapagos islands where nobody was around. and it was kind of that act of

braveas ifly was astound thing o toto me -- bravery concern and really touching. and her strength was incredible. and, of course, dory and fred are rick, i think what's freezing -- surprising there is the dynamics of the relationship were constantly shifting. frederick could be cruel to dory, probably unsurprisingly, and dory starts to get is sick of it. this woman who was like, please, let me accompany you. i will do anything, i will spread your philosophy, i'll be yourts hand mind, and she start- maid opinion, and she starts to get sick of him. and, of course, the baroness. [laughter] one of my favorite thingses about her is according to margaret, the woman who gave birth alone, she said the baroness, quote, invited both heinz and fred rick to her wigwam, and i think one of them might have taken her up on that the at some point. so it's -- they all, i love them all at various times and for different reasons.

>> any other questions? yes. >> yeah. i'm -- about the two guys that were with the baroness, how long they put up with that. [laughter] i am only halfway through the book with, but did you have letters to support that or, from them or their memoirs in. >> yeah. so one of them, rue calf lawrence, who was -- the baroness had these two lovers that she came with, rudolph and robert. robert phillipson was sort of her preferred lover, the man she called her husband. rudolph lawrence had been her business partner in paris and her lover but got denotedded. and, you know -- demoted. she would spend her time pitting these two men against each other, and a lot of the information comes from dory and margaret's memoir withs because rudolph lawrence would show up and be, like, i can't take this woman anymore, oh, my god, you've got to help me, i knead

to stay -- i need to stay here, get me away from this woman. both of them do report on how rudolph lawrence would show up ande describe the behavior that he was enduring. .. i don't know why he put it up for so long. i guess it's one of the mysteries. >> so there's a recurring themen in the book about surviving in isolation in different ways. so either question. do you think these characters were doomed from the start, or do you think they ever had a real chance of achieving the utopia that they wanted so desperately? >> that's a very good question. i think that the people who arrived there are the simplest

reasons at the best chance and, of course, they're the ones without giving any spoiled for people want to read the other ones who survived an sort of endorse. i think dori, one of the great things about dori was i didn't have to do a lot of foreshadowing as an author. she i did all the foreshadowing for me. click okay i don't have to be heavy-handed. affect my other -- my mother was like can you cut that foreshadowing? this woman is like dangerous read every step which she really felt though. ii think that she talks frequently about how people were not there for the right reasons. now i sound like a contest and the bachelor. people were nottu there for the right reasons. the book is cooked been compared to survivor by both "wall street journal" and the "washington post." if you're not being compared to the vibrant you know you found it interesting piece of history. but yeah, i think we had to come

for the right reasons for absolutely. well, i am so appreciative of your time. >> likewise. >> thank you so much to the harrisburg book festival, midtown cinema was thrilled be a partner in that this year, and everybody needs to get this book. it's absolutely actu. it's thrilling, and honestly as an agatha christie fan i was happy to have, it was like having a new best friend to read. >> thank thank you very muc. and thank you, everybody for coming. >> give it up for abbott, everyone. [applause] >> you have been watching booktv, television for serious readers. every sunday on c-span2 hear from nonfiction authors discussing their books and watch your favorite authors online any time at booktv.org. you can also find us on facebook, youtube and x at booktv.

>> starting now it's an extra at of american history on c-span2 you're here are some of the programs you will see today. authors come historians and the son of the composer ability holidays strange group discussing anti-lynching songs legacy. michael and robert talk about the u.s. government case against their parents who were executed in 1953 after being convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage for the soviet union. jeter, historians discuss the unauthorized enlistment of minors in the civil war. you can find the full schedule on your program guide by visiting c-span.org/history. starting now its lectures in history. university of dallas professor william otto discusses the 1787 constitutional convention and the creation of the electoral college. >> good morning guys. so the aftermath of the revolution, there are a c