Will be sent said along to ther who answer them at the end of the presentation. Also we encourage you to support todays featured author by purchasing her book from independent book seller, politics and prose. Finally i big thank you goes out to the featured sponsors. The blair family foundation, downtown crowne, and montgomery college. Lets get started. Tonight we have got author casey cep to talk about her bestselling book furious hours murder, fraud, and the last trial of harper lee. She tells the true story of murder, revenge and courtroom drama. Beloved writer harper lee spent years working on telling this story. Now casey cep brings the story to life from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama. Casey cep is a staff writer at the new yorker. After graduating from harvard with a degree in english she earned a master philosophy in theology at the university of oxford as a rhodes scholar. In interviewing case tonight is eugene, an awardwinning veteran journalist who has an eclectic passion for history, lifestyles, real estate of the chesapeake bay. He has been widely published in several magazines, authored three books and was for many years the lead reporter and editor at the washington post. Since departing the posting 2004 he has gone on and 115 awards for his work and has more than 55 violence in the near times. Welcome to the program, casey and gene. Thanks so much for having us. Thank you. J. C. , its good to see virtually. Thanks so much. I know will have a great conversation. I love your book and i just tore through it, its a page turner. I was fascinated by the research you did and how you put altogether. I guess my first question is, the remarkable story of the five or six alleged murders that occurred allegedly at fans of this minister in mississippi, and then the white motor who successfully defended him and then defended the man who actually killed him, one of the relatives of the deceased. Harper lee [inaudible] to turn the story into a book. My first question is, how did you find the story and did the story finds you . Thats a great question, and i always love to talk about the origins of the book. I guess to start off, it is te this book looks at three very different lives and people of different genders and different races who have basically one thing in common which is how they met at this intersection, at this courthouse at this particular trial. What about the book is a gave me the chance to think about what brought them all to that place. Its a perfectly fine time i think will be remiss if we didnt they tell us whats happening all around the country and the ways people are starting to think about the lives of others and how important it is to think about the way the black lights are particularly in peril and the kinds of privileged people like you and and i have. For me the book was a fine opportunity to do that, to think about the life of someone like harper lee and the role she played in helping us to think about diversity and discrimination. I think for that reason it might not surprise people learn she was the origin of all of this. I had gone down to the new yorker to alabama to write a story about her come when the world nor does the second book from harper lee which we can talk about later. It turned out to be the first one should have written. It was a very early draft of mockingbird but i went down to write about her and i found out about this true crime project you undertaken in the 70s and 80s. Because she done so much reporting and research, a lot of other writers had not looked into the case and had decided not to write about it because we were afraid of being it was this great story waiting to be told and a story she herself was a part of and that would bring it forward from the 70s and 80s all the way to today. I was lucky. I went down at the right time, the near the end of her life. Friends and family are willing to talk about it and i everything came together. The book, too. There were different lives. The alleged serial killer in this book is a black man and a vigilante who murdered him is black, too, and he mentioned the white lawyer who defended them both and that voter had also had pretty interesting career in Democratic Politics before you settle into smalltown law. It was the perfect story for me and it got to write about religion and politics. Theres lots of work in it but i found my way to the store because of harper lee. Let me ask you, you write a lot about race and politics in the deep south but you grew up and you live on the Eastern Shore of maryland which has its own racial history of segregation and racism. But probably know Eastern Shore legislator civil rights law and in 1963 version all these guns were exempted from the law. There was a statue of the courthouse, a confederate statue more recently of another statue of Frederick Douglass. How is going up on the Eastern Shore of maryland affected your worldview and how has it in for him to work in general and prepared you for the world yet entered to report . I should just the right away since we are digital and folks unfolding there in gaithersburg, for folks listening there will be a rally tomorrow at the public county courthouse which is the Circuit Court here. As a gene mention, were going to gather in george floyd memory and were going to call for Racial Justice right under the statute for it is still there. Theres still a monument right outside the courthouse and years and just go theres a controversy over honoring Frederick Douglass and on the same courthouse green pictures now a beautiful statute of Frederick Douglass and at the time i should be paying a lot of people that the two statues together told the story and we should keep both. Ive lived long enough to regret that and it will help one of the outcomes of the protest nor is finally that monument is taken down because a lot of people go to the courthouse, whether its to pay a parking ticket would get their marriage license, a lot of people of color to look at that statue every time to enter and wonder if it is still part of the Justice System or not. I think a lot about where i grew up and look its a beautiful part of the country and i grew up fishing and crabbing and its a wonderful place to live and i grew up on a farm. Theres a reason when i went to alabama and spent time in harper lees hometown felt similar to me, felt a lot like where i grew up in and bad ways. Im of a generation i hope were a lot of us feel like we dont have to live the way our grandparents did. We didnt have to maintain the statues are parents fought to maintain and the ways of the future should be here now. Im glad you asked about and did you think in general the chance to talk about harper lee when i gone on a book tour you talk about her when youre in boston or when youre in new york, and the truth is its a National Problem in this country. Doesnt exist in alabama and youre not better produce having been born outside of the deep south. For me i grew up in a religious household size comfortable going to church with sources and to think a lot about the virtues of small test but also devices. There was some hard work for me in this book inking about the way harper lee as a white person wanted to tell the story about the experience of black americans and look, part of my book talks about the experience of black americans in the 20s and 30s all the way up to the 70s. For me i i tried to approach it with humility and honesty and circumspection about what i could understand and what i couldnt and what it been well than in the past and not well done, and more importantly whose voices had already been heard and whose voices have not. Im grateful for the way i grew up and am grateful for all the ways its changing, and are plenty of signs around the Community Already in anticipation of tomorrow that say black lives matter and equality for all. Thats always been part of the story. Frederick douglass scottys statue because he is born and raised here, how we might as at our moral genealogy and find the people we can be proud of and make statures of them and tell their stories more than the stories we have in the past. Thanks for asking about it. I live not far from where grew up some talking to you from Caroline County and east injuries beautiful and wonderful but its that complicate the place as the deep south. I was intrigued by the title of your book, furious hours which i found a bit mysterious first. Later on in the book i learned where it came from but could you please explain how you chose it and its significance to the work of harper lee and the work of writers in general . Thats a a great question, gene. Plenty of people who read the book carefully and thoughtfully wonder why the heck thats the title. First of all, when you publish a book so many people helped bring into the world and in my case to a lot of folks, my publisher help with the a copy editing ae cover and the design and layout and her some folks who help you with your titles. The reason my book is such an explanatory subtitle is a fake a worried no one would know what the heck it was about. They added all the nouns unity to know about in order to whether or not the book was for you. Murder, fraud, the last row of harper lee. We ought to tell people what this book is about but if you read the book you know furious hours is his phrase accounts one of the only public lectures harper lee gave talk about alabama history and who were talking about black lives. Harper lee in the talk lifted up the experience of some of the indigenous tribes who had inhabited alabama before white settlers arrived. In fact, the phrase furious hours refers to the last battle of the creek war which is what caused the exodus of creek indians from alabama, and it was when soontobe president jackson led a grade of Army Soldiers against the creeks and is a terrible slaughter. Shes talking about that history and what alabamians know about the past and what they dont know. I love that phrase in the last battle, the battle took place very during your were all these murders took place. Harper lee for a lot of the time she was intent working on this book with staying at the horse the Horseshoe Bend motel. It is a long history. It doesnt just go back to slavery when to think about Race Relations in the south. It does go back to the interactions between the colonists and the indigenous people. Its a bit of an echo and i love it is her words because a lot of this book is about her and her gift as a writer. Its a beautiful provocative phrase. I chose it for the title because it comes from her but also it speaks all three characters. There are no more furious hours in this book than the hours when a man was accused of murdering his wife. I think about the political career of this would be liberal in the deep south and boy, did he spend a lot of time arguing with his colleagues in the Alabama State senate and arguing with people in his a lawyer, that lawyer who was a politician in his early days. And, of course, theres harper lee where im sure well talk more about her but the story of harper lees life post mockingbird was a lot of furious hours at the typewriter just because she wasnt publishing didnt mean she wasnt trying to write. Providers who busied themselves with complicated stories, here it is the right word for when you try to make sense of the world. It spoke about all three of them but also, when some essential to call Something Else im open to suggestions. I begin very glad for the subtitle which clarifies it all anyway. To you as a writer have any furious hours . No. I would say net since thats not my experience as a writer. These characters wall were alld to write about for Different Reasons but becomes harper lee i thought she would be the one had the most in common with. But shes a very different writer than i am and she really suffered over her work and she struggled with it. To some extent she voucherize that suffering ephod in order for writing to be good you had to slave over and think about and work hard on it and just be miserable over it, and thats not my experience. I love my work. It was mostly with joy and gratitude for getting paid to do it. A lot of people have harder jobs and they work harder at the dont get to pursue their passion. I have furious hours with a garden and the weeds in it and all kinds of things, the way police treat black people but no, when i sit down to write it is mostly easy and fun and i just feel lucky to get to do it for living. Which do you prefer, the reporting or writing, if you had to choose . I love them, i love getting to do both because when i get bored with reporting us time to do writing. Talking to people who study it, if you get frustrated with the writing or you dont know enough, then you the opportunity to go and learn from other people. I like them both about the same. Im glad both are a part of my life. I do a lot of book reviews and i feel more consolatory and lonely, and i love with reporting you can pick up the phone to call somebody and see what they think or talk to them about their work. I like to do a little of both. You say in your book nothing writes itself, and then you say Janet Malcolm called the space between reporting and writing an abyss. Everyone told harper lee the story she found was destined to be a bestseller but no one could tell how to write it. Could you talk about the abyss between the reporting and the writing . I guess thats not something you so much experienced. Thats a fine question and it is certainly true, look, the premise of this book is harper lee know about this case right after it happened and she went to town and she did all the same work i did, which is a better writer than i, and i think theres a straightforward question of why finn then coule write a book about it . I do think malcolm is right. Its true the things that happen in the world by chaotic and disparate and they do not necessarily have a narrative even though they happen day after day. Other than chronology theres nothing that makes make sense r that tells you whos right and whos wrong in which themes are important. Newspapers everyday try make sense of the world and with all keep a diary or you sit down at dinner and you want to talk about your day, you have to start making a plot out of it. Thats the abyss she means. Top of that theres some question whether he wanted it with artistry, do more than just pull peoples quotes imitate what the temperature was. If youre going to try to write beautiful sentences or shake the story that has echoes and reverberations, you can start to bring art and craft into it. But even just thinking out what happens in order to tell it in, thats the abyss. And for poor harper lee mentioned in all this reporting and this research and she has her stacks of papers and outer Court Transcripts and a death certificate there so the question of who was the main character and what were the themes and who were the hero and who was the village and who should we work for . There was just problem after problem that she couldnt quite figure out how to solve. I do have a lot of sympathy for it. I have talked to some writers since a book came out who really struggle with writers block. I do because they had a successful book and then try to figure out how to do it again, or theyre just so it is always one to write the configure how to do it. They tell you the start of the life of the type of store they want to write about and you just think thats perfect, thats wonderful. I want to read that book and, of course, the question is how to get it down on the page and what quotes to use, and where to make the chapter breaks. Im sympathetic to it all. Its a lot to decide and it is difficult and it can be done well or poorly. Thats what i think poor harper lee was wrestling with. The truth of the matter is if you read go spend a watchman your final illustration of the difference between the two because its the version of scouts story she wrote first and video going to read to kill a mockingbird and you realize everything is a choice. You can choose the chronology, you can choose the narration, you can choose which seems happen and i am of the mindset as you did a better job of it in mockingbird that in watchman. And that are set and help to make better choices than the one should she done and a first draft and if there are writers listening you can go back your first draft and realize sometimes that abyss is real wide and hard to bridge. I think malcolm is right that it can be truly sad and it can be burdensome for some people here its mostly not for me but ill tell you, again the truth of the matter is harper lee is a better writer than a period artistry People Struggle with is i am playing checkers and theyre playing chess. They are doing Something Else. I talked to poets and i mention this in the book. I quote of sonnet Robert Lowell wrote for elizabeth bishop, those are to poets above and have have comforted an interesting friendship but robert said elizabeth is a casual music that makes everyday perfect. Then he says she leaves holes interpose for kenyas onion. Shes been stingy fanfic at the right word for something. The poetry sharon is beautiful but she didnt produce very much of it and i think partly thats because of the high standard, to go back to Janet Malcolm is word, this abyss between what you would see and what you like to communicate and how you do it with this imperfect material which is a language. That was a long rambling at which to say im sympathetic to it and i can bring to life and think about poor harper lee, but im just not quite as cerebral. When he said that i do i just think it will always come language is always in perfect and inadequate but weve got to mighty through. It seems also she was overwhelmed by all of her material. What you have here is an embarrassment of riches. That was a nice way of saying it was. And she had an embarrassment of riches of both kinds because i know she had a different problem and it sounds like you and i do. That book did so well, mockingbird was an instant bestseller at an ongoing bestseller. That meant harper lee did not have to write for a living. She can live offer royalties and i think another thing that just reinforce this dysfunction about her work is she never had deadlines and she never need anything more than the royalty check from mockingbird. Thats part of her story a