of a beloved children's series is, as levar burton says on the cover, if you grew up on reading rainbow this book is for you. mr. bertino. thanks for spending a few minutes with us on book tv. you're welcome. thank you. it's a pleasure. thank you.

good afternoon, everyone. welcome to midtown cinema. my name is stewart. i am the director of community engagement at the cinema. i'll be your host moderator for this afternoon's program. i thank you all for joining us. we're so happy that we're here and we hope that you enjoy this event with new york times bestselling author albert kaler at the 12th annual harrisburg harrisburg book festival.

so some quick housekeeping notes. we get started. first of all, thank you so 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 and turn this to the audience and see if anybody any questions for abbott. there is a there's a microphone there. if you wanted to utilize that, would probably great for the for the crowd. anybody have any questions for. yeah. um, i'm sorry, matthew. as much as i'll repeat it, it has to do with the process when you've a story like this and so many primary resources, does it must be 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 like really juicy piece of information you really wanted to get in there and it just didn't fit the storyline? oh, was anything left on the editing room floor when it comes to that? that's a very good question i know.

i in and this one because it was know it's eight people living on this tiny tiny island so you're going to get petty squabbles and what i leave on the cutting room floor were like a of those petty squabbles so mean i kept all of the big dramatic you know murderous and mystery but but mean we kind of got to the point where it's like i let you borrow my donkey you didn't you know and, that kind of thing. i mean that's that's the sort of part and you expect that kind of thing. i did a little bit of that just to show escalation and just to show how seeds, you know, began of the animosity that developed. but as far as leaving juicy stuff, it's all in there. so yeah, anybody else have any questions? yes. this seemed to. the the the baroness you said that the two main, main characters have a book by them.

they wrote a memoir. did the baroness have a memoir also she not have a memoir. unfortunately, i would have loved to have gotten my hands on a baroness memoir, but she wrote many letters that i but i transl i had translated here have. there been other books about or other articles that you had that used besides the letters themselves? any newspaper articles i could find. i was very to me, i employed researchers. paris, vienna, german, german researcher. so who all scoured 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 into her genealogy for me. and so all that was very helpful terms of just piecing together this character who surrounded herself with myth. i she was a wonderful self mythologize her and loved to invent about herself so it was great fun to sort of say was this true was this true was this true and in fact check her a little.

so i really just you know not having it her memorized every other bit of information i could possibly find about her and the second half was how did the two main characters come to find the galapagos islands meaning did they go there instead of. yeah. other place. no, it's a very good question and especially because if anybody knows anything about the galapagos, it's not this sort of lush tropical shore swinging palm trees, vegetation, beautiful. yeah, exactly. it's no right. it is this volcanic island covered in lava rock. very unappealing, very not very fertile. you know a lot of people had been there before, talked about one. i think it was the first director of the new york zoological said it looked like as though lucifer heaved up a bunch of rock from hell. and that was the galapagos islands. so, you know, why would they pick this? i think, frederick, one of the

challenge, you know, it was sort of his can i become the ubermensch that i'm meant to be and? they did put floreana because it at least had one source of freshwater. and they thought if we go up into the highlands we will at least be able to have a good attempt at making a garden and sustaining ourselves and having drinking. so they they picked the one island that they may be could have sustain themselves on and it was a challenge. but of course, they, they, they worked it out for a while. yeah, sure and the infamous stories that came from that island beforehand also made it. yeah i think part of the possibly part of the allure of going there. yeah. right before fredrik and dorie showed, there was a group of norwegians who had tried to settle there and they, they had like even built a little house on the bay. but of course, by the time frederick and dorie showed up, they had fled. so well. and that started i mean, honestly it's so great, kind of gothic way to start the book. yeah. so yes.

so you read this headline, then you become entranced with this story. how do you go about the process of efficiently determining is there enough material out there? yeah, right. a story. and then i'm if you've ever fallen in love with something that and you've just frustrated really felt that there's not enough details. yes, i'll answer the second part of the question first. absolute it happens all the time. i have a folder full of story ideas on my computer that i'm never going to be able to do a book for because primary source material is just not there and maybe they might make a good novel one day where i can actually fill in the blanks with my imagination, but i'm not going to be able to do them as a nonfiction book. so, you know, everybody there who wants to be written about one day write memoir or start writing, start them now so people can write about you in a hundred years and how crazy you are or, wonderful or whatever. but i'm just thinking about know write memoirs for for for who are going to live, who are going to come after us.

but, but for this one, i knew that right away very quickly there were two great memoirs from two of the women. and from there i said, okay, i can there i did an archival search in worldcat which is where you go to find all of your archival sources from libraries around the world and discovered that there was a trove of archives at the university of southern and another trove at the smithsonian institution that the explorers had kept, especially explorer george allen hancock, who was an oil an oil mogul. his family. the library at tar pits out in laos angeles, hancock park, is named after his family, and he was the most important that would come the galapagos during this time period. and had files and files on these people, including all the letters that they had sent him. so once i got a sense of, oh, i have this voice, this voice. i have this point of view. and this point view. it just all started to come together. and i could see also reports their scientists had made of

their. so you got a bunch of different perspectives, you know, that you make the narrative come together. oh, any other questions. yes. right. so which of the three exiled groups did you find the most sympathetic or entertaining. yeah, shocking to write about? and conversely, which one of the three groups did you find the least you know, they all they also surprise me at different times for, different reasons. four let me just start with the witmer family. hinds and margaret witmer, who came over after dorie frederick. they had heard about, you know, dorian frieder because they wanted to follow in their footsteps. margaret was five months pregnant when she came over. this woman gave birth like all alone in at midnight in the dark, surrounded by, like, wild animals and like on the galapagos islands where nobody was around. and it was just kind of that act

of bravery she was astounding to me and really touching and her her strength was incredible. and of course, dorian frederick i think what's surprising there is the dynamics of the relationship were constantly shifting. frederick could be cruel to dorian, probably unsurprisingly, and dory to get sick of it. you know this woman who was like, please let me accompany you. please. i'll do anything. i'll spread your philosophy will be your, you know, your handmaiden by side. he starts to get of him and she starts acting in very ways. and then of course, the baroness i mean, what, what else is it? we said one of my favorite things about her is that according to margaret, the who gave birth alone, she said the baroness, quote, invites both hynes and frederick to her wigwam. and i think that maybe one or both of them might have taken her up on that at some point. so it just it's, you know, they all i love them all for for a various times and for different

reasons. so and any other questions? yes. yeah. i was surprised about the two guys that were with the baroness, how long they put up with her. i am only halfway through the book, but did you have letters to support that or from them or their memoirs? so one of them, rudolf lawrence, was the baroness had these two lovers that she came with. rudolf lawrence and robert phillips and robert phillips and was sort of her preferred lover, you know, the man she called her husband, rudolf lawrence, had been her business partner, paris, and her lover. but got demoted. and, you know, she would she would spend her time pitting these two men against each other. and rudolf lawrence, a lot of that information comes from and margaret memoirs because rudolf would show up at their at their various residences and like i can't take this woman anymore. she did this, she did that and he'd go to the other place and say, oh, my god, you've got to help.

let me stay here. i need to get back to germany, get me away from this woman. so the of them, their memoirs were contradictory a lot of ways, but both of them do report on how rudolf lawrence would show up, describe the behavior that he was enduring. and so a lot of that was and also with george allan hancock, he had written letters to hancock about that. and he and the men of hancock's entourage also witnessed lot of it. so there were a couple of sources that but i don't know why he put up for it for so long. i guess that's one of the one of the mysteries. and so there's a recurring theme in the book like surviving in isolation in different ways. and but i have a question do you think these characters were doomed from the start or do you they ever had a real chance of the utopia that they wanted so desperately? that's a very good question. i think that the people who arrived there for, the simplest,

purest reasons, had the best chance. and of course, they are the ones without giving any spoilers, people who want to read they are the ones who survive and sort of endure and you know i think that dorie you she she one of the great things about dorie was that i didn't have to do a lot of foreshadowing as an author. she did all the foreshadowing for me. so i was like, okay, i don't have to be heavy with that. she's in fact my editor. like, could you please cut back dory's foreshadowing because this woman is full of like, you know, dangerous around every step where she really felt though. and so i think that i think that she talks frequently about people weren't there for the right reasons. now, i sound like a contestant on the bachelor. people were there for the right reasons and actually survivor. so. well, the book has been compared to by both the wall street journal and the washington post. i was like, if you if you're nonfiction book is being competitor survivor, you know you found that interesting piece of history so but yeah i think

you know we had a come for the right reasons absolute like well i so appreciative of your time but and likewise and thank you so much the harrisburg festival midtown cinema was thrilled to be a partner in that this year and everybody needs to get this book. it's absolutely a page turner. it's thrilling. it's and and honestly as christie fan i was to have it it was like having a new best friend so thank you very much thank you everybody for coming. thank you. give it up for avid.