We have about 45 minutes for this session and then will leave about 15 for q and a. The sponsors for our panel. Are stay with us . [applause] im happy to introduce our moderator for this session. Hes not only an attorney im sorry. I skipped over this. Hes over there. Moderator is an associate professor at the university of mississippi and hes also at the southern journal and positive. Thank you all for coming. We appreciate the presence of our guests on the panel here at the book festival. Its getting big and better every year. I will introduce briefly our guests and will carry on a discussion and i hope you all have some questions for the panel towards the end. Bestselling author of several books. Her newest book is amazons best book. Maybe some of you read this, it captures the bill of that age and its gangsters. They also call her book a well researched and highly engaging work filled with intriguing infidelity, murder and headline catching courtroom drama. Glad to have you with us. Casey is author of curious hours, which recent reviews in the commercial described as her ravishing debut. Casey lives in the Eastern Shore of maryland. She is a graduate of harvard and one in advanced degree in theology. Shes already winning all sorts of commercial appeal. The pacing of a thriller, serious hours reveals full possession of her gilts. Then we have those of us were old enough to remember the tv show, the untouchables. [laughter] some of us remember that and more recently the film. He worked as coauthor with max of scarface. Another era, it features a couple of familiar characters for those of us old enough to remember that. Its one of my favorite cities in chicago. No class of authority then. They call the book of gripping take on chicagos past. It reads like a novel. This is his first book. Thank you. To set the stage for our discussion, i asked each of them to give a summary of what the book is about and what attracted them to the subject. Ill answer the second part of your question and answering your first, i grew up not quite so much on the tv series but first loving tracy and finding my way to Kevin Costner. Initially because it was reminding me of the comic strip i loved as a kid. It is based on the true story or at least it was supposed to be. The familiarity geographically make me want to know more about the story of elliott so i was a rare kid who would go to the library and try to read as much as i could. Its something that interested me. And all of the books about al capone, a quickly presented me with this contradiction, i would seek on film presenting this great story with ellie is a hero and i would read nonfiction and it presented me with a different perspective. It had nothing to do with al capone but i also discovered that a writers whose fiction i already knew had written tracy but also some books about elliott and his career in a different image, closer to the hero that i knew from hollywood. They have a short afterward at the end talking about his research. How surprised he was to go to where elliotts papers were kept in cleveland and would look at newspaper articles and discovered what was discounted about his career, specifically with regards to al capone. I loved his work and i got to know him, i was studying history at the university of michigan. Eventually, we were complaining so often about how the story was misrepresented by hollywood and a lot of poorly founded accounts and eventually i said to max, weve got to stop complaining about this and do something about it. You are a master novelist, so we can write the Nonfiction Book that reads like a novel and do the story right. So thats the story. If anybody has watched the tv series, boardwalk empire, there was a character named george, he was incredibly odd and cuckoo and he spoke of himself in the third person. Nobody quite knew what to make of him, he stole everything he was in. He was a real person and the real george also spoke to himself as the third person. So many people wanted to kill remus. Ill give you my elevator pitch, he ended up becoming the most successful bootlegger in american history, he was also an inspiration. His wife imaging with whom he throw parties, ended up falling in love with an agent who put him in jail. This is all true. So that started a very big triangle. In my book, hes one of the good guys. [laughter] i want to say thank you to curtis, he did me the favor of not reading my sub title and the truth is, i was reluctant, first two of the nouns. I grew up loving mockingbird, probably like a lot of you. I was always interested in that, went down in 2015 to write a story about a watchman. When i was reporting on that, i learned about this other book she tried to write. It was a true crime project. A series of murders in a small town in alabama. Thank you. Correct me if im wrong but i dont think theres any simple character in any of your books that is still living. Did anybody encounter any personal observation or talk to any of these characters . He was alive for the first year i was working on the book but for those of you who read it, i dont want to get bogged down on any one of the plots but the alleged murder was gunned down by a vigilante at the funeral of his last victim. That is still very much alive. I interviewed him for the book and i think i maybe had the advantage where i feel like my story is contemporary compared to them. I was able to interview a lot of people who knew my central characters and other family members and a lot of folks in this town remember meeting harpreet because she worked on the book in the 70s and 80s. I want to ask how you were able to develop the characters, defined their personalities, not really knowing them. I did speak with family members. He was an employer in cincinna cincinnati. He owned 35 of all the liquor in the u. S. He had about a 40 Million Dollar porch, its not a inflation. I talked about the people who worked with him, they had stories and artifacts so i talked with them. The biggest piece was a 5500 page transcript at the library, which was invaluable. It gave incredible detail about his life, various people who knew him. Bizarre works, one of my favorites was that george did not wear underwear. [laughter] was apparently a cause for great alarm at that time. Is the sign of an unfound mind. Just Little Things that by talking to relatives, but that wasnt the part of my research i would say. My coauthor and i began with the understanding that these are mythic characters portrayed in Television Series and we wanted to make them live and breathe as much as possible. Both of them, especially him but especially al capone were very different. It came down to incorporating their voices as much as possible. Neither lefty compromise, maybe we can talk about heroes, short and spare 21 page account of the component investigation. As much as possible, we tried to go back to that. Fortunately the two of them gave a lot of interviews and you can pull their voices from that as much as possible. Because these two men died, they were both surprisingly young. The age of 26, and elliott is 27 and hes put in charge of the untouchables. They died very young. Capone and 47. They spoke to a couple people who did that near the tail end of his life. Its a great question and im sure theres some writers in the room, and if there arent, im sure everybody has tried to launch about something the never met. A grandmother, greatgrandfather, the patriarch of the town where you were been and raise expelled theres interesting methods for doing it. Court transcripts, theres almost always employs reports or investigative record or trial transcripts so you get a sense of the persons voice, but then you just go rooting around like a pig for truffles, liking for any mention of the person in newspapers or magazines or any kind of contemporary coverage, and for all three of us we talk before hand, being clear about our methods, was as important to us as the final product so for all of us you can go and look and its a pretty serious bib logograph and a note situation so you can see exactly how we put at the portraits together and who talked to and what documents we relied on. Each of you have again wayon the kind of journalistic approach of just the facts, maam, and have developed a really very colorful stories with strong character development, and i wanted to read a short passage from casey book that touches on a technique that Truman Capote likes to think he invented. Casey referred to him, he thought he was the sort of marco polo of new journalism, and invented the first nonfiction novel, but this is what i think for purposes of our discussion, its a good line that capote barriod the strategies of fiction writers in his nonfiction. Rendering settings that were more than just datelines, crafting characters who are more than just quotations and physical descriptions, and identifying win his reporting or imposing on it, moods and themes that made a story more than the sum of its parts, and certainly there is more of a you call it new journalism and magazine writing or the Nonfiction Books we read that they are more colorful and people tend to put themselves in the headofthe characters and so and so may have thought such a thing if want to ask each of you hutch of our own imagination dare youy in crafting your story . Casey, why dont i start with you. I was hoping could carve an answer from what these two. Wear ucreatures with minds mindd imaginations and you spend time thinking but someone you start to imagine things if think you have to be very careful when you writing a Nonfiction Book and want to very clear about the sourcing and where things come from, and if you do speculate, just want to flag that for readers but its an interesting thing. Were gathered around this genre of true crime and it has different standards from other nonfiction genres, and its been coopted by podcasts and documentaries in a way that the boundaries are even more pourous between what is true and what is not and what is speculation and what is fact. I guess im probably on the conservative side of things, and i took my cue from harper lee, because part of the book it bowers relationship to the genre of true crime and she helped capote report in cold blood and she learned but the source dispel decisions he made so theres a her feelings but the genre and her thoughts and objections to some places it being goes in the 770s and 80s. Exactly what casey said. Also, i was dealing a lot with the trial transcript, and the whole nature of trial is that somebody is lying. If not one person, several people are lying think whole nature of the said she said. Was very controversial i do what people say and what they lie about and at that time they omit is just as telling to them as a character and to the story itself what they say that is truthful. I like to flag it and just say this is what the person contended or what this person claimed. And i like to trust that the reader has some Emotional Intelligence to decide who is lying and i dont have to spell it out for you and sort of the end sort of act like a prosecutor and lay out the case of what i think happened while leaving it a little open to interpretation. So, that people can have a little intellectual play with the book on their own with their open psyche and their own prejudices everybody brings to reading. This is one place in my case where i dont i didnt need the devil on my shoulder pulling me in that direction because i was work with a novelist who this would be the one sort one of the things that made the collaboration interesting and hopefully makes the book a little unusual. Wasnt a dispute often timed but a tug of war between well we can say that, cant say that. His imagination having written a lot of historical novels would pull him more in that line and i would say, well, this is about as far as i can the can go. We have places where theres speculation and its necessary speculation and its sign posted as such. But just to give an example, theres a fame now the Kevin Costner movie but a famous see in the untouchables where al capone kills someone with a baseball bat and that is one of the few things film that is actually has a basis in history. Had been discounted by a lot of of revisionist historians and we were able to find contemporary evidence in newspapers and true time magazines, that the story had been spread very deliberately by the capone mob as way of engendering fare bus capone in other words in this position as much as he wanted to he boyfriend the he public he needed to be feared by his employees in order to main his hold on power. So letting people know if you try to cross him, you would end up beaten with a baseball bat is one way to do that. So thats an instance where we have the in the book we have the discovery of the bodies and then we say the story started going out on the gangland grape vine and we till it the way it came down to us and can be pretty confident Something Like it happened, but thats an instance where youre dealing with people who arent going to leave a record of multiple homicides so youre sort of left with the stories they told but themes. Im going read you your account of that scene where de niro goes crazy in the movie but this is from your book. A body guard handed capone a baseball bat, which he gripped in hands as powerful as babe ruths. While the stunned conspirators still seated were held at gunpoint, the boss began crushing his skull, red streamed down the mans face like a cracked egg, the screams of the two brave gunman awaiting the turns were cut off one at a time by similar blows. Capote worked him over for a while, then none of the men dead, each clinging to consciousness, they were turned over to the waiting clutch of bodyguard its 0 blasted away, and then theres a line so goes the story, with variations but chilling similarities. Arent you pulling your punch a little bit . Well, again, this is an instance where were very mindful that were dealing with an account characters of a story that has been soing myologyize that sometimes people are to quick to discount the myths. I think theres a great basis of fact behind it in this case but at the same time, as as we talk but earlier issue did have to convince my coauthor the book needed 150 pages of support note he would say cant we write a essay and call its day and i said no people need to see how wellfounded this is so you can go back to the book and see the newspaper articles and true crime accounts. When youre dieted a history that dated to the 70s, having an image from true crime magazine from 1932, illustration of capone taking a baseball bat to these guys puts the lie to that quite strongly. You added credibility to the story by suggesting maybe it didnt happen exactly this way. You mentioned end notes. We talk but this before we went on. Apparently new phenomenon with so much of nonfiction. All three of these books are chockfull of end notes, probably 3040 pages, maybe more, the back of the book. If you wonder where they get that you can look in the back of the back, its not in the academic footnotes that clutter academic writing but its there for you, and up until maybe 25 years ago, you really didnt have that requirement, and i think its a good one, and i congratulate all three of these writers. It is very extensive footnotes in it. You have an authors note where you assure the reader that there are, quote, no invented dialogue in the bork and you provide a lot of attribution to your end notes so i thought id test it. Oh, no. Well, bear with me. This is the beginning of a chapter and its the way writers try to develop a scene and asset scene. It begins, on the morning of november 29, 1922, preparing for an appearance been the United States supreme court, wily brant the assistant attorney general has a cameo role in your book, too she stood at her closet and condition template it what to contemplated what to wear. I she had her way she wouldnt spend more than a moment thinking about fashion but from her first day on the job, the press focused on the cut of her dress, the style of her hair, the height of her heels, its. Said, come on, you obviously are making this up and damned if i dont look in the end notes and you got it from her own diorite library of congress. So, its a good example of how these people have gone out of their way to assure that there is credibility in what youre writing about. If could just say one thing if the danger is only to tell stories that are so roughly documented and obviously only certain people of certain meanedsed a access or had access to keep a diary and Certain Community stories were prioritized over others so i think the kind of attention to detail in the scrupulousness with which we all operate is important but equally important are those silents where the historical record may never give you enough to make a character and dont want to erase the people from the story, too. So i just want to make it sound like its a gym of you can only make characters from this people who left a robust record behind, because there are real injustices in history and its why often academics, aside from their own beeasesases are are bd by what remains of the historical past. Academic historians put apart shelbyfoot. Shell by foote and they cite a dramatic scene involving robert e. Lee in the battle of gettysburg, and the mississippi unit as decimated and had lee cantorring around on his horse like beating his chest and saying, my fault, my fault, all my fault, my men are lost. And the historians insist theres in other reference of that anywhere, and charged to put with making it up. And then we talked briefly about this. We were talking about another book that hadnt occurred to me but thats midnight in the garden of good and evil, which was wonderful book but came in for a lot of criticism because not really nonfiction. Its strong suspicion a lot of it is made up. Its interesting he massaged the time frame, too. So that was the big criticism. Yeah. In our case, i referenced earlier that ness had a ghostwriter write an autobiography and became the basis of the tv show and the film and thats a book the be published vs. Of the book the unup toables that came out after ness died in set 57 has been dismissed in a lot of the nonfiction write bought al capone and elliott ness and we set out to subject this to sort of scrutiny and try to verify because doesnt have footnotes, has a lot of invented dialogue and he cant know what people were wearing on a particular day necessarily. But if you take the incidents at are described in the become piecemeal their chronology is all messed up but take the incident described and compare them to the scrapbooks ness kept and to other sources we were able to find, i was shocked, frankly, however of it checked out and how much of it we were able to talk about in our own book to put in the proper Chronological Order and with the additional context because we didnt use anything from that book w