And those that will be sent on to the author to answer them we encourage you to support the author and finally a big think that goes out toward featured sponsors and Montgomery College and so lets get started caseys back to talk to her bestselling book murder and fraud in the last trial of harper lee beautifully telling the true story of courtroom drama and murder and revenge we spent years working on this story and now the shocking murder to the courtroom drama after graduating from Harvard College with a master of philosophy and theology interviewing her tonight as an awardwinning veteran journalist of history and lifestyles real estate and the Chesapeake Bay with washington editor at the Washington Post so welcome to the program. Thank you for having us. Its good to see you virtually. Yes thank you so much i know we will have a great conversation. I just tore through your book. Its a page turner i was fascinated and i guess my first question is the remarkable story at the hands of the minister in mississippi and those that successfully defended him and with harper lee turning the story into a book. So my first question is did the story find you . Yes. I always love to talk about the origins of the book and to start off it is true to have very different lives people have different genders and races and one thing in common which is how they met at this intersection at this particular trial but what i love he gave me a chance to think what brought them to that place we would be remiss if we did acknowledge what was happening all around the country and how important it is to think about the type of privilege that you and i have so this book was an opportunity to do that and think about harper lee and to think about discrimination from new york or to alabama to write a story and that there was a second book from harper lee that we can talk about the first she had ever written but i went down to write about her and found out these crime projects in the seventies and eighties because she had done so much reporting and Research Many had not looked into the case and decided not to write about it and she herself was a part of and i was just lucky i went down at the right time with people who had never talked about her before and those that were more willing to do that and everything came together i. E. Also mean the book there were very different lives in a serial killer is a black man and the vigilante is black and mentioning the white lawyer who defended them both so to have a pretty interesting caree career, its the perfect story for me and i got to write about religion and politics but i found my way to the story because of harper lee. You write a lot about race and politics in the deep south the growing up on the Eastern Shore of maryland the segregation and racism and then they were all exempted from the law. A statue at the courthouse and another statue of Frederick Douglass and how has that prepared your work in general . Yes. So there will be a rally tomorrow at the courthouse here. And as mentioned, b will gather in George Floyds memory calling for racial justice. Its still there. Right outside the courthouse and years and years ago there was a controversy to honor Frederick Douglass and the same reading is to share the opinion the two statutes together told the story. I have lived long enough to regret that i hope one of the outcomes the monument has been taken down a lot of those people that go a lot of people of color have to look at that statue every time they enter and wonder if that still part of the Justice System or not. I think about a lot where i grew up in. Beautiful part of the country, i gripped fishing and crabbing its a wonderful place to live actually its similar to me and a lot of like where i grew up and where a lot of us feel will have to we dont have to maintain to keep those statues and the wave of the future should be now. Im glad you asked that the chance to talk about harper lee and youre not better just from being born outside of the deep south. I felt comfortable and grew up so i was comfortable going to church with my sources and i think of the virtues of the small town and there was some hard work for me thinking about the way she wait for someone to tell a story about the experience of black americans and these talk in the twenties and thirties through the seventies. I tried to approach it with humility and honesty and what i could understand and what i could not im grateful for the way i grew up and what is changing and there are plenty of signs around the Community Already in and test pay that but douglas got a statue because he was born and raised here so we should just look back and find people we can be proud of and have statues for them. Thank you for asking about it. Its not far from where i grew up the Eastern Shore is beautiful but its a complicated place to be. Indeed. I was intrigued by the title of your book. Later i book my learned where it came from but explain how you chose a and the significance in general. Thats a great question. If people read the book thoughtfully and still wonder why thats the title. When you publish a book so many people hope to bring that into the world and so many come out like my publisher who helped with copy editing and the what design and layout the reason it has such an explanatory subtitle because nobody would know what it was about they added all the nouns so you know the book is for you with murder and fraud and doing a lot of work im glad someone said we need to tell with this book is about but if you read it you know this is a phrase one of the few lectures she ever gave talking about the history and harper lee really listed at the experience of some of the indigenous tribes that inhabited alabama before white settlers arrived and in fact it refers to the last battle which caused the exodus to take indians from alabama and soon to be president jackson gave Army Soldiers and it was a terrible slaughter and shes talking about that history and what they dont know about the past so that last battle is very near where all the murders took place in a lot of the time she was working on the book staying there so i could lift of that prehistory i didnt get to talk much in the book and with the violence and ongoing fight for ownership. It is a long history thinking about Race Relations in the south to the interactions its a little bit of an echo and it is a beautiful phrase and i chose it for the title because it came from her but speaks to all three characters there are no more furious hours in this book than murdering his wife and a political career that would be liberal in the deep south and spending time arguing with his colleagues in the Alabama State senate and about immigration. And then of course there is harper lee but the story of her life had a lot of the furious hours at the typewriter just because she wasnt publishing didnt mean she wasnt trying to write those who believe in complicated stories. This is what you do trying to make sense of the world so it is all three but when someone says you should call it Something Else im open to suggestions im very glad for the subtitle which clarifies it anyway. Do you have any furious hours . No. In that sense its not my experience as a writer. Theyre all different one hard to write about i thought she was the one i had the most in common that she is a very different writer than i am and really suffered over her work and struggled and to some extent said for writing to be good you have to slave over and think and be miserable. That is not my experience. I like my work and it mostly with joy and gratitude for getting paid to do it. A lot of people have harder jobs and work and to be with the garden and the weeds its mostly easy and fun and lucky we get to do it. I love to do both. But then you can go on learn from other people. I am glad both are part of my life i do a lot of book reviews and i love with reporting you can just pick up the phone and call somebody to see what they think so i like to do a little of both. You say in your book nothing writes itself and then say Janet Malcolm come to his face before the abyss. Everyone told harper lee the story she has done was destined to be a bestseller but nobody could tell her how to write it. Talk about the abyss between the reporting and the writing was so much experience and then my thencurrent she write a book about it but she be chaotic and disparate you and with that chronology to know whos writer who is wrong. If you want to come home and talk about your day there has to be a plot that is the address and also to do it with artistry and then have people just tire the temperature but if you try to write beautiful sentences or shape a story with echoes and reverberations then you can bring in art and craft into it but just figure out what happens in what order to tell it in his the abyss. Before harper lee she had done all this reporting and research and her stack of papers it was still a question who is the main character and what were the themes and who are the heroes and the villains and who should we root for . Problem after problem she cannot figure out how to solve. I do have a lot of sympathy since the book came out but when we talk about a story they want to write about you think thats perfect and wonderful. I want to read that book of course the question is how to get it down and what quotes to use and where to make the chapter breaks. I am sympathetic to at all. It is a lot to decide and it is difficult. It can be done well or poorly. But if you read the watchmen you already have the find illustration between the two because that is a version the way she votes first and then you read to kill a mockingbird everything is a choice you can choose that chronology, narration, which scenes happen. Im of the mindset she did a better job with mockingbird they are watchmen and an editor helped her to do better choices and if there are writers listening go back to your first draft and realize sometimes that at this is real wide and hard to bridge