Transcripts For CSPAN2 Erik Larson On Dead Wake 20240622

Village in steel. Ng im not going to concentrate much on the book. T my editor, jerry kern, is a huge fan of the book. He has specific questions. Im goingdi to talk more about int a sense the process. Sense. You are now in what you call the dark country of no ideas. That is a term i didnt come up with. My good friend and publicist came up with it when i am looking for a period to describe my next book. When i finish a book i have no other idea on my plate and start from scratch. It is a longish process taking about a year before starting the next project during which i am unpleasant and snappish and pissy. That process do you sort of read not indiscriminate and go from there . I wish i had a way to distill the process. It is mostly chance. I do things that i hope will try to jog things lose in my mind. I will walk through the stacks in my Favorite Library in seattle and just pull books at random and just read to see what the book is about as a way to expose myself to new things and books i would never come across. This has never yielded anything. Never but it is a way to make truly it is a way to make me feel productive. I dont like sitting around and i have a lot of desk toys as some of you know and i can spend a lot of time orchestrating battles with the ken doll and japanese boat train but in the end it doesnt pay college tuition. Of which there were three. There are one. One is still in. One may be going to law school but we are not sure. We sound happily, they didnt. But the way this came about was it goes back, actually, to 1994. The book came out i think the hard cover in 2003. But in 1994 i read a book, great novel by caleb carr called the alienist. How many of you thread booksome. [applause] you read that book . Its about a fictional serial killer in old new york. And when i read that book, i came away thinking, i came away thinking wow, i really got ain good sense of what old 1890s new york must have been like. And then i thought why dont i try to do a nonfiction, a d Nonfiction Book about a historical murder and try and evoke the same thing. Now, this is a long story by the way. So if anybody wants to get up, go the bathroom oh, im sure youre going to be bored to tears by this. Well, you may be, actually, you may be. E so i thought, okay, im going to look into maybe doing a book about a murder. So this is the sausage being made here. G i went back to my library and tookrd out a book called the ensign low media of murder. Encylopedia of murder. I came across many guys and i was excited. The story of had Horror Hotels and acid baths. But i didnt want to do what i refer to as crime porn. Something along the line of gosford park. I kept looking and found the murder i started working on. It wasnt particularly mysterious or interesting. There was a bizarre hurricane connection. I fell in love and it became the book called eye of the storm. When i was done i started thinking about maybe i should look for a murder. I never heard of the worlds exhibition. I had never heard of it. There is nothing on my plate and i will read about the fair. I went back to the same library and they have a large collection about the worlds fair even in seattle and that told me something. But what happened was i started reading the first thing i read was this tedious academic thing about the fair. It was like a marxist, feminist deconstruction of whatever pavilion. It was really mind killing but i was already in that zone so i was willing to read anything. Then i came to the foot notes, a lot of historians tend to put the best stuff in the footnotes because if you get tenure you cannot write about things in the footnotes. First one i came across was the trigger for this book. That was where i read that juicy foot was introduced to consumers for the first time at the worlds fair. Why is that significant . Because i am a big juicy fruit gum chewer and some of you out there. But you know the juicy fruit gum is a private obsession because it is a strange gum. If you are sitting next to someone on the bus chewing juicy fruit gum you think they just threw up. It was like wow, this is fascinating. And the more i read about it from the foot notes and the more i read getting into more interesting books i thought this was an amazing event. That is what brought me back to holmes. I thought im going to do this fair but i need Something Else and holmes provided the dark u juxta juxtaposition to the light city. The title came the first day and stayed every sense. The last lit fest you were telling me it was the devil city and you were insecure about that book. Those of whew who read it i assume most of you, i dont find that as a writer anything to be insecure about that book. Were you surprised at the level of success of that book . I was very surprised. We can go on about the logic of publishing for another half hour. I will mention one thing that happened with the introduction. Two people showed up and during the question and answer period, two young women in their early 30s, stood up and were you know, well groomed they seemed like normal people and they were. But it turned out they said they were direct descendants of the serial killer and they were both corporate lawyers. I asked if they had any weapons. But they one of them said, you know i want to tell you we are so happy about this book because it is the first time anyone did our black sheep relative any justice. And then i swear to god she said as a matter of fact we are having a Family Reunion in the Hudson Valley this saturday and did i want to come . Can we assume the garden of the beast was somehow born out of that . Was perhaps born out of some of your research for devil in white city . Dealing a professor, a woman who worked at the tribune. Zeier zero connection. Really . No connection whatsoever. You could not have said i think i want to do a take on hitler in world war ii . Absolutely not. No, what happened was it had to do with the political situation when i started thinking about the garden of the beast. It was getting creepy with the Bush Administration putting political agents into departments and firing u. S. Attorneys for their political beliefs and it got me thinking this is what happens. People wonder what might it have been like to lib in berlin during hitlers rise . That was the question that popped into my head. It is more convoluted than that. I happened to go to a bookstore trying to be productive and went into a bookstore to look at the works of history and came across this book face out i had never read. 1700 pages. No pictures. Small print. This is why i had never read it right . You are probably thinking this is the bible. 1700 pages, no print and rise and fall of the third right. I had never read it, took it home loved it if one can be said to love a book about the third right. That is when the two things came together. This concern about politics and a political situation and realizing that the author of rise and fall of the third right had actually been there in berlin and had socialized with all of these characters and awful people before they became known as awful people and before the war and before anybody knew how it would turn out. That is what made me start thinking what would that have been like to have lived in berlin when you didnt know the ending. How would it have fell . What would you have seen if i had been in a cafe when hitler is driven by in the open car. Would i have been thrilled or board or text friends saying what is up with that mustache . And then it came to finding the right characters and thank god i came across ambassador dodd and really his daughter. You write in the short introduction to dead wake the Last Crossing of the lusitania you talked about a day in may the depths have been obscured in the mist of history. I am curious why certain things do get buried like that . Part of it must be research along the way. Not hers but others. First of all in the case of lusitania it is not like anyone knew the story. I think most people know lusitania was a boat and it was sunk. That is not a story. You know what i mean . Am i wrong . You are exactly correct. That is what we all pick up from high school. Okay. Lusitania torpedo sinks and next day we are in the war like it is the world war one equivalent of pearl harbor. I was doubting the research of not entering the war after reading this. Questions like in the case of serial killers and the worlds fair or in the case of isaac storm, the storm that destroyed galveston, people in texas knew it teaching it in seventh grade but outside of texas no one knew about it and i didnt know about it until i stumbled upon it in the new york world a newspaper from that era. Again with the killer and the worlds fair stumbled across that too and no one else in chicago knew about the worlds fair of 1893. Especially with a book like this where there have been millions of words written about it you do certainly can and you research the old fashion as a way of gaining light in other books, how do you get around that . That was a big thing. It was a mental obstacle about doing the book about the lusitania. It crossed my mind do to it because i like mari skare maritime history i have been fascinated with this and i would have done a book about the titantic if James Cameron and others did it to death. There was this obstacle of knowing a lot had been done. But something kept gnawing at me. I put it in an archive to look at the materials and i realized i might be able to bring something because this was just a glimpse of what was available and i knew much more was available. There was show much fine textured material, so deep and rich and the whole deal that i thought i think i can actually do something knew here in terms of the history and that is to put on my Alfred Hitchcock hat and do a book of suspense. There were new things in the books and it is hard to do a heavy Research Project without finding things. There too i am surprised at the reception because my fear was people would be burned out on lusitania like i have been there done that. Do you feel with all of these best sellers in your background do you feel any pressure, erik, with each new book after the success of devil . Yes. And it is allevated by a glass of red wine or is there something more to it . Only way to alleviate the pressure is there is pressure and you feel it and anybody who says they dont is probably still drunk. But for me what you have to do is put a list aside and say forget it i am doing a study i want to do because i am interested in this study. I proceed with the idea of if i am interested in this someone else is going to be interested. That is my feeling. So far i havent been wrong. It could be with the next book. It helps i have a sounding board like my daughters who dont mince words. You said your wifes first book is isaac storm. I suppose it is like saying who is your favorite daughter. Do you have a Favorite Book of yours . And why . I dont have a Favorite Book because i cant have a Favorite Book. It is like daughters. I dont have a favorite daughter. I have a favorite wife. You met your wife on a blind date, did you not . I did. Anybody else meet on a blind date with a successful marriage . I dont believe any of you. And we have been married about 30 years. It was a blind date however the first date was terrible. Where did you go . Tell me you didnt go to a library . It was in San Francisco and we went out for a drink and dinner. There was no chemistry and nothing. But then a couple weeks past and i felt i was arrogant and can i use the word asshole . I was an arrogant asshole and called her up on the theory of every woman deserves a second chance. The second date clicked. It was great. There is, given your profession, there is no underestimating the value of having a family that you appreciate and who also, and i can get the sense, understands you and what you do. I have two families. The secret family is not one want to talk about. No value of family is incredible. For stability, maintaining a positive footing and you cant get lost in your own little world as you know when you have first toddlers and then teenagers and then you know kids who need to learn how to drive and all of this stuff. It just keeps you balanced. You have used your kids to your advantage you were telling me when you were here with devil in the white city you didnt have her out crying on the street trying to sell copies. But you had her sing. I did. I dont know if anybody was here for that. But it goes back to the printers road of 2003. There was a song in devil in the white city written for the fair. It is the one that goes dada and i had my daughter do it. She was so cute. I tried to get her to come back for this. She is 21. And she is living in new york. She is like dad it is not happening. Something else happened at the printers row thing of taking questions which will in five minutes. You got asked a seminole chicago question, didnt you . You were talking about the nature of taking eggsquestions and many get up saying i have a question and they will ask and it will be answered and the second part of that question is. But. We had started to talk about it earlier. Devil in the white city the first inkling i got was at the university of chicago, and a number of Chicago Police Department Homicide cops turned out. I didnt do anything. They came to hear the talk. And there was a bunch of these guys and it was a packed house. During the question and answer period a guy gets up and those who recall the story, chicago won the right to do the worlds fair over new york and washington. And this guy gets up a classic guy, kind of gnarly and he says i just have one question you know chicago gets the fair, new york and washington dont, who put on the fix . The kicker is the guy turned out to be the alderman for hide park. Be careful with your questions. This is a fantastic book. I cannot pick my favorite erik larson book. Devil in the white city is way up there and when i ireread to like i do every couple years it risus to the top and then every couple years he as a new book that tops that. This things hit the book so effectively. Harris swam from the ship. Quote i had no feeling of feet when i went overboard. He felt as comfortable as if he had simply entered a swimming pool. So composed when he came across a floating book he picked it up and examineed it. Examined it i am in awe of where that writing comes from. You are in the presence of a master and a decent guy and a cool guy and i probably think a pretty good father too. Dont be too much in awe because if you read that correctly it should have been fear not feet. Well my eyes are going. I had no fear as i went overboard. Erik larson, line up and ask questions. You have to step up to the microphone. Just shout your question. Did he go to the Family Reunion . No. Those are the kind of questions i like. I like Historical Books in general. Doris goodwin and such. I love your books and you have a different style almost like a novel. I feel like your books have a theme. Do you write to get a message across as opposed to getting history across . No. It will be great if we can take 50 questions in 15 minutes if every answer is no. No but i never set out to flog any message i really want to get across but invariable there is something that emerges in the course of research that is not intended but does come out, if you want it to be a message. Like in isaac storm about the hurricane the story is about hubris guy who thinks he knew everything and proved him wrong. And you know i spoke with one that came closest to starting with the idea of a message was in the garden of beast. I had no intention of making any kind of like getting up on a soap box and preaching. I let that story, once i found the characters you have to go with what you have got. I love nuance. I love nuance characters. In the case of garden of the beast, i have been criticized by people for including martha in the book or not being more judgmental in the book about the ambassador and his daughter and not taking a more judgmental stand on hitler and so forth but jove to tell it the way it is. It doesnt take away. It isnt part of the architecture of the book. Back in the day when you used to appear at smaller venues like out in forest park. I saw you doing an author event for devil in the white city. You mention the types of story where you have two and you bring it together at the end i believe you called it a parallel narrative dual narrative. You said it was difficult to do and that particularly book would be the last dual narrative and obviously it wasnt. So my question is what attracts you to the dual narrative and is this your last dual narrative . Are you a stalker . I never want to do another one because it is like writing two books instead of one. You are writing two books. I did say publically i would not do another dual narrative and the next book was thunderstruck and it was completely by accident believe me i told my wife you know i am going to get attacked for being derivative of my own book. But it was like i just love the story and that became the story of the second most notorious murder in british history. That was the second last one i did in my view. I dont like at it as a dual narrative or this as a dual narrative. So yeah. I dont have a question so much but i want to thank you for all of the great books you are providing. I have been telling friends that if you read the book you are only reading half the story. I mean if you look at the notes toward the back of the book he provides so much more information you are not getting if you dont read them. For example, he puts in his foot notes where you can go to a website and see film of people boarding the boat and film of the boat leafving the harbor. It was so nice you offer all of this Additional Information for the readers. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you very much for your comment because i have learned people love the foot notes and i love people that love the foot notes because that is the genesis of devil in the white city. I worked very hard at my foot notes to squeeze in the things that would not fit into the narrative sometimes they are far field. Young lady . Can you seen or are you aware of the photo Stans Company production of the devil in the white city . I know of it but i have not seen it. Do you recommend it . Highly. When i read the book i will make you a deal. When the announcement came out, i was very anxious to go see the production and i thoroughly enjoyed it. I recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the book . Did you read the book . Yeah. Let me interrupt and ask there is always every since published, there is a lot of movie buzz about devil in the white city. What is going on . It is still under option by leo leo. There is incentive to do it and soon there is going to be a change of studio but they are still progressing. Look at gone girl. You know . It is just terrific. For my books, it is good. Yes, sir . You mentioned what it was like to write a prewar book not knowing the ending. Before you write your first sentence do you know where the book is ending . That is a very astute question. You need to break it up into phases. Like in the actual final writing process, after i finished by research, actually i know when i do the book proposal. With Nonfiction Books it is not like novels. You have to have the novel turned in before they can decide if they want to publish it or not. But nonfiction, you send them, this is important to realize when you think about why some books are expensive and some are not doing research is an ex expensive process. I make a pitch of a book proposal that is very detailed based on my preliminary research. It is an educated guess as to what is out there. By the time i have the book published i know where the book is most likely going to begin. I do also know the ending. There is always one scene that comes out early in the process that you realize that is where i am going to end this book. It can change and there can be additional material that follows follows. I love touching the end of the book to see what happened to them in the end. I also think of it as thing with the music trailing off and stuff. But i also know watt the main ending will be before i start to write the actual ending of the book. Erik when you were younger you had a dream of becoming a new yorker cartoonist. That is correct. Do you do any drawing now . I do draw. I gave up my aspirations at an early age. 1314. I was drawing cartoons and submitting them. I sent them to the new yorker and they came back within 24 hours thchlt hours. My feeling is the new yorker had a guy waiting at the mailbox. I love to draw and i do keep an ongoing journal of text and drawings. Part of your youth was a desire to and becoming a novelist. You could say, right now, i am not going to go to the dark place, i will sit down and write a novel. Is that every going to happen . Probably not. I am a failed novelist. I have four complete novels and one didnt include the novels. There are a hundred publishers who say we will pub publish that. The historical aspect is outstanding and gives a lot of information and makes it come alive. I am wondering about your Character Development being suburb. Is that from your research and do you put your own feelings of the Character Development to make them real and personali . Personal i dont start a book unless there is enough material that the characters will be rich and come alive on some level. Once you decide who the characters will be it becomes a process of going to distance. Going to the archives. Spending endless amounts of time and looking for the bits and pieces because if you break down i would argue if you break down some of the things that you might have in mind about characters and Character Development, i think what it might come down to is three our four very specific choice details about the character. That is what it is all about. It is not about masses of material. It is finding those little specific things that are going to light the imagination for me and for a reader. If you put them in the right places and the right structure you will have a book that i would argue seem much richer and more alive than the words themselves if you analyze them or were to suggest. That is something i feel. What do you, erik larson and this is my last question i would assume there would be like 30 lusitania questions but it means many you have have not bought the book yet. What do you read for pleasure . I read fiction. I am almost exclusively a fiction reader. In the course of the day, especially when you do research there was a lot of really awful nonfiction out there sex and you know things very dry stuff i have to go through in the course of the day so i love to just read fiction. Anybody in particular . Well you know i just finished a book on the plane called missing person very good. I love detective fiction. I love anything that is well written. That is my thing. Anybody read this is where i meet you . The first 25 pages of scenes are funny and then you have to be a guy to appreciate it. The guys i always go back to are like hemmingway, dashal hammond, west mcdowel i loved. He is a detective writer too. And i have been reading dark scandinavian detective stories. I couldnt find steve larson. There was this creepy iceland story. Think about the scandinavian authors. They know how to kill people. Erik larson you know how to write a narrative. Dead weight the most recent. You know what his other books are. If they are not on the shelves you should not be at lit fest. Thank you for coming. He will be signing outside. Thank you. On behalf of the printers row lit fest we would like to thank the panel, thank you for attending and mr. Larson will be signing books in the lobby. Every weekend booktv offers programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. Keep watching for more here on cspan2 and watch any of our past programs online at booktv. Org. This was in 1979, craig was graduating from high school. He was a very talented basketball player. He had an offer from the university of washington that was going to pay his way, and he had been invited he had been accepted at princeton where he, the family would have to pay some of the bills. He would have to earn some money on the side to get to go to princeton, and he had a conversation with his father who was sitting at the Kitchen Table and his mother who was washing dishes and he was talking it over with his dad, and he said, well dad, i think i might go to the university of washington. And he says that his father kind of stroked his beard and didnt come down on him he just said well craig, id be kind of disappointed if you made a decision like this based on money. And craig said well, sort of containing himself he said, well, ill think about that. But he was elated, because he wanted to go to princeton. And he said it was the most generous act of kindness he had seen in his life, and he went to princeton. His parents paid the difference, sometimes with a credit card, and he loved actually being there. And he just he has felt so grateful ever since that its a story he does tell. Yeah. And michelle a couple of years later, decides well, gee id like to go to princeton too perhaps. But at the time, her counselors at Whitney Young said her grades and scores were too low and her sights were too high. How did she react to that . So she looked at craig and she said, well, if craig can get into princeton i can show them im going to get into princeton. And exactly just as you said, the counselors at Whitney Young said you might want to be thinking a little more modestly about where you can go. But she applied she wrote a long essay and as her mother says, she kind of talked her way in. She did feel she talked her way in, because i think a lot of people have looked at shes told the story about the grades and the scores being not what shed hoped theyd be. And, you know, this was the era of affirmative action, and a lot of people have looked at michelle going back to those times and saying, oh, well, she only got in because of affirmative action. But you say she did something to make her own case. She argued her own case. She had done very well at school and, of course as with so many africanamerican students who were getting access to these institutions for the first time, she not only went to princeton but she did extremely well there. She did well. Was she happy at princeton . It was a very interesting remark she made at Maya Angelous Memorial Service last year when she said looking back on her recent career, she talked about what it was like to be on the campaign trail when she was criticized anding she mentioned a feeling of loneliness in ivy league classrooms. She had a bit of a struggle when she first got there at age 17. And she worked her way through with the help of friends and that pretty patented Michelle Obama determination and discipline. How did the whole affirmative action debate affect her career at princeton and her sense of herself . Her sense of living in two worlds and being judged as something other than just michelle . Right. She wrote in her senior thesis that princeton made her, she said it made me more aware of my blackness than ever before, than in chicago. And that was because of the nature of princeton at that time where black students were very much in a minority, where we also should remember there were not so many women and also where class was a big question, after all. Michelle said i got to princeton, and i saw some kids with bmws. I didnt even know adults who had bmws. And it was a place where many black students felt slightly other, not welcomed. And this was something that she was very aware of. And she and her friends talked about it. And even from michelles first days on campus in her dormitory thats right. Her first roommate. Its a remarkable story and it has to do with the mother of her freshman roommate. This student Katherine Donnelly and this is the a story she herself tells with some chagrin at this point as you can imagine shes in the dorm room, everybodys moving in, and Craig Robinson shows up and says hey, is my sister around . And she budget. And cat lyndonly went up to Katherine Donnelly went up to see her mother, and she said mom, guess what . I have an africanamerican roommate. And her mother went ballistic. She complained to the princeton authorities and said my daughter did not come to princeton to be live anything a room with a black student. Wow. Now princeton, to its credit, did not move her. Later in the semester she did move out but it was a very dramatic sign of the times. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Heres a look at some books that are being published this week. Three new books about Richard Nixon are first up. In being nixon, evan thomas recalls the life of our 37th president. William burr and Jeffrey Kimball report on the nixon administrations plan to use Nuclear Weapons to end the vietnam war in nixons nuclear specter. And tim wiener examines the causes of Richard Nixons downfall in one man against the world. Also being released this week, hugh hewitt looks at the political ambition of Hillary Clinton in the queen. In getting real, fox news anchor Gretchen Carlson recounts her life and the challenges shes faced as a woman in broadcast television. Garland tucker iii profiles 14 leaders who helped shape american conservativism in conservative heroes. And in unfair, law professor adam veratto examines what he claims are the hidden biases of the criminal justice system. Look for the titles in this coming week and watch for the authors in the near future on booktv. Booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what theyre reading this summer. Im reading several things right now. Im reading china shakes the world by james cringe. He was a Financial Times writer, awardwinning books, very fascinating look. Hes a lucid writer dealing with, you know, kind of what you would not think would be an interesting topic, but it is. Im also reading primo levys works that have been compiled into a book called if this is a man, and just an astounding account, his experience as an italian jew that survived auschwitz in one of the most important accounts of that to come out of the war. Just very inspiring makes you think about, you know, the rule of law and, you know, just because something is legal doesnt necessarily mean that its humane. You know . Some pretty weighty things to consider there. But its a reminder. Im reading through proverbs and corinthians right now, you know just in my morning devotional reading. And then, you know i always peruse different topics. Ive finished some very good books lately. Ive finished a. J. Langetts book called the patriots. Fascinating look at our early framers and founders and how we not only came to have a nation but the importance of samuel adams and the importance of all of these men and kind of the tale woven from the handful of them and what it cost them to give us our country. So i really read all over the map. Im also perusing some german books that i bought on a recent trip to berlin that were first person accounts about berlin life from 193345. So theyre just you never know what im going to be reading. I just, i have varied interests. Booktv wanted to know what wants to know what youre reading this summer. Tweet us your answer, booktv or post it on facebook. Com booktv. Heres a hook at some of the current a look at some of the current best selling books according to indy bound which represents sales in independent bookstores throughout the country. Topping the list, David Mccullough recounting the birth of flight in the wright brothers. Thats followed by the lifechanging magic of tidying up by marie condo. David brooks latest book comes in third in the road to character. He looks at the lives of ten historical figures as examples for how to achieve success. Next dead wake by erik larson recalling the sinking of the lucetania by a german uboat in 1915. In fifth endoflife care in being mortal. Our look at the best sellers list continues with h is for hawk by Helen Mcdonald and j. K. Rowlings very good life in sixth and seventh respectively followed by jon krakauer who discusses a series of sexual assaults that took place at the university of montana in missoula. And wrapping up this weeks best sellers, tom brokaw, longtime anchor of nbc nightly news, discusses his personal battle with cancer in a lucky life interrupted. And thats a look at some of the current nonfiction best sellers according to indie bound. These three young people all worked for Panda Express. Im sure youve all had some of that in your airport travels. Tucson is not well known for big immigration raids, but for some reason there was a big raid on Panda Express in tucson not too far from where i live, about a mile away. It all started this young woman that you see here shed been working at Panda Express full time for four years and she made so little money that she couldnt feed her child. So she made the mistake of applying for food stamps for him, little freddie, and she used the fake Social Security number that she used to work at Panda Express, and thats how she got caught, you know . That number bounced back from the des the department of economic security. So the state conducted an information, department of public safety. They also go after drug dealers and heir the highway patrol. Theyre kind of bigtime police people. So they launched Something Like a six month investigation, and i have a stack of papers this high the amount of time and effort they took into investigating this young woman. And they listed every wage she had earned from Panda Express i think over four years it was less than 50,000. Not surprising. So they planned a raid, and they also at the same time they became suspicious of the other Panda Express workers. It turned out at that particular store 12 out of 14 were undocumented. The employees said that, you know, the employer was wholly complicit but, of course, the employer denied it, you know, in knowing they were undocumented. What happened was early that morning the day of the raid, they went to marlans trailer on the south side of tucson, the poor side of town, and they conducted this thing where, you know, all the police cars came up, the sirens, they banged on the tour of her trailer at dawn the door of her trailer at dawn, she was asleep in bed with her infant son eight months old. Luckily, she was living with family. The police these people haul her out of there. They wouldnt even allow her to change out of her pa jam pajamas. Her sister took little boy and she did not see him again for five months. These other two young people omar and [inaudible] they also had children, and among the 12 Panda Express workers who were arrested, there were 12 young children. There was a raid later that day at the store itself. They came right before the lunch rush and surrounded the, you know the parking lot next to the Mattress Store and so forth all these police officers, and they hauled out all the Panda Express workers in their little outfits and their hats and took them down to Border Patrol and they were charged with a felony, felony impersonation of another human being. They had really great lawyers, they got off on a misdemeanor but once they settled their criminal case this is the typical trajectory then they had to go to the detension center because they were undocumented immigrants. These three had all been brought to the United States as young children, and they all three had very good, very good lawyers. And one it turns out, went to Elementary School with my daughter, and when i interviewed her later she had a picture of my daughter in her house in her fourth grade yearbook which was an amazing thing. They were about the same ages, and my daughter had just gotten her college degree, and this woman had just been released from jail. So that was a wrenching thing to me, to think she was one of the little kids i used to see on my gray ground. Anyway playground. Anyway, they were permitted to stay, and theyre all in the United States now. I went to visit marlan five months after this happened. Her child was terrified of her. I sat with her in her kitchen. The grandmother was holding freddie. Marlan was there, i was there, and freddie was really wary and scared would not allow his own mother to touch him. You know, eventually it worked out, and he took to his mother again. But who knows, you know, what kind of psychic wound that would make on a small child. And a nice thing a quote that i had was when she said they took us away from our children, separated us from our families. I will never forget. It was only for working. They treated it like a crime. 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