Mary Turrell News Today

Settle down in a comfy chair with some of the week’s best longreads.

<strong>The long read:</strong> Mary and Derek weren’t the first couple to get together at Easterlea Rest Home. But those other relationships had been more like friendships – and this was something else entirely

so o.s.b. wahls children start disappearing one by one. one moves to montreal. marries a french woman. two sisters move to new york, and one keeps an all-white boarding house on the far upper west side, and another winds up living on long island. she fancies herself a feminist and publishes a pamphlet. she talks about herself as a white person. talks about her interactions with black people. the closest you get to understanding that she is o.s.b. wahls daughter is when she says she kee...

never know this story other than that. is that not correct? >> yeah. you know, in part because of the way he reacted to this. when his daughter was kicked out of the first grade for being black and rumors started flying -- >> a blonde, blue-eyed girl is kicked out for being black. go ahead. >> and, you know, he would a choice to make. he could have just moved to new york, moved to montreal at that point. he could have moved to just about anywhere, because, you know, if were thinking ab...

they had to prove that his daughter was black. and that they hadnt satisfied their burden. >> which is a lawyerly argument. >> right. i think it was an argument his father would have loved. whats amazing about that suit is because his parents were so well-known in washington, because his father was a public figure, a trial like this was bound to be essentially a pub memorialization of his parents. you know, this was a -- i mean, it was -- it produced a record that enabled me to really ...

their burden. >> which is a lawyerly argument. >> right. i think it was an argument his father would have loved. whats amazing about that suit is because his parents were so well-known in washington, because his father was a public figure, a trial like this was bound to be essentially a public memorialization of his parents. you know, this was a -- i mean, it was -- it produced a record that enabled me to really write their story. >> what is it like communing with the dead that way? >>...

their story. >> what is it like communing with the dead that way? >> well, it -- i mean, its -- in a way, i think a trial transcript is -- you know, in some ways you feel very distanced from people, because theyre being asked very specific kinds of questions. you know, theyre expected to give a specific kind of answer. but at the same time you have so many different perspectives that you really get a very intimate, three-dimensional sense of who people are and why theyre doing what the...