Please do three things. First, like this video. Second, comment below to let us know where you are watching from and third, if the subscriber button to get notification about our upcoming presentations. Youre going to have questions, please write them in the chat section, most, if not all will be sent to the author and she will answer them at the end of the presentation. Also, we encourage you to support todays featured author by purchasing her book, independent booksellers and festival partner. Finally, a big thank you goes to the sponsors, david family foundation, and montgomery college. Lets get started. Tonight, weve got author casey cep to talk about her bestselling book, the last child of harper lee. She beautifully tells the true story of murder, revenge and courtroom drama. Beloved writer, she spent years telling this story. She brings the story to life from the shocking murders to court room, to the racial politics. Shes a writer after graduating from harvard, she earned a master of philosophy at the university as a scholar. Interviewing casey tonight is eugene meyer, an awardwinning veteran journalist with a passion for history, varying lifestyles, travel, real estate and the chesapeake bay. Widely published in several magazines, authored three books and was for many years, a reporter and editor at the washington post. In 2004, is garnered 15 awards for his book and more than 55 in the New York Times. Welcome to the program. Thank you for having us. Its good to see you virtually. Thank you, i know we are going to have a great conversation. I love your book. I was fascinated by the research you did and how you put it all together and my first question, the mississippi and then the one who successfully defended him and defended the man who killed him. Turning this into a book so my first question, how did the story find you . Thats a great question. I always love to talk about the origins of the book and to start off, its true the book is on different lives, people who have genders and races who have one thing in common, which is how they met, the intersection of this time, but what i love about the book is it gave me the chance to see this. The acknowledgment of whats happening around the country and the ways they think about others and the privileges you and i have, for me, the book was an opportunity to do that, think about the life of someone like harper lee and think about diversity discrimination, and for that reason, it may not surprise people she was the origin of all of this. We can talk about later, the first one she had ever written, i wanted to write about her and i found out about what she had undertaken in the 70s and 80s and because she had done so much research, a lot of writers have not looked into the case and decided not to write about. So this was a great story waiting to be told she herself would bring it forward in the 70s and 80s all the way to today. I was lucky went down and is near the end so people who had never talked about before, friends and families who are willing to do that and everything came together and i mean the book, to very different lives. The differences, he was murdered and hes black, too. You mentioned the white lawyer and the lawyer had also had an interesting career in politics before settled in with this. Got to write about politics and there is a lot at work and i found my way to this story. Let me ask you, you wrote a lot about race and politics, the racial history of aggregation and history, as opposed to inclusion, the civil rights law and 1963 version, all eastern counties were accepted from the law. As a statue, a confederate statue recently, how is growing up there affected your worldview and how has it informed your work in general and prepared you for the world like this . Since we are digital, at the courthouse which is the Circuit Court here, as you mentioned, we are going to gather in George Floyds memory and Racial Justice, right under the statute, its still there. Years ago, theres a controversy over honoring ever and theres no a beautiful statue and at the time, i shared these with peop people, the two statures together told the story and we should tell those, i hope one of the outcomes and its taken down and whether its to get there license, a lot of people have to look at the statue every time they enter and part of the Justice System or not so i think a lot about where i grew up it is a beautiful part of the country and i grew up fishing and its a wonderful place to live in a group on a farm, theres a reason when i went to alabama and spent a little bit of time in harper lees town, it felt a lot like where i had grown up. A generation i hope were a lot of us feel like we dont have to live like they did, we do not have to maintain statues and the ways of the future should be here now. I do think in general, the chance to talk about harper lee, you talk about her when youre in boston and its a National Problem in the country, its not only in alabama so i think for me, i grew up in a religious household, i think a lot about the virtues and devices. Thinking about the way harper lee as a white person, wanted to tell the experience of black americans, a talk about the experience is black americans in the 20s and 30s to the 70s so i think for me, i try to approach it with humility and honesty about what i could understand what i couldnt and what had been well done in the past and not well done and more important, whose voices had already been heard and whose voices hadnt. Im grateful for where i grew up and all the ways its changing and there are plenty of signs around the Community Already in anticipation of black lives matter and equality for all and i think thats always part of the story. We might as well look back in our genealogy and find people we are proud of and make statues for them and tell their stories more than the stories of the past. Thank you for asking. There are people i was talking to, the Eastern Shore is beautiful but its a complicated place. It is indeed. I was intrigued by the title of your book, furious hours which i found mysterious at first. Later on in the book, i learned where it came from but could you explain how you chose it and the significance to the work of harper lee and writers in general. Thats a great question. Plenty of people read the book about the underside wondering why at the title. When you publish a book, so many people, a lot of folks like my publisher who helped with the color and the design and layout, they help with the titles and the reason my book has this tile, i was worried people would wonder what the heck it was about. So there was a lot of work and im grateful someone said we need to tell what the book is about but if youve read the book you know furious hours is a phrase that comes from one of the public lectures harper lee gave and she is talking about the history and black lives, harper lee talked about the experiences some of the indigenous tribes who inhabited alabama before white sellers arrived. It refers to the last battle which was what caused the exodus from alabama. It was when soon to be president jackson led a brigade of army soldiers, it was a terrible slaughter and shes talking about that history and what albanians know and what they dont know, i love that phrase and the last battle near where all of these murders are. She was in town working on this book. I liked that i could lift up that prehistory which i didnt talk about much in the book and the ongoing stories of violence and the ongoing site for ownership in this area because it is a long history, it doesnt just go back to slaves new talk about Race Relations, it talks about the interactions between introduces people so its an echo and i love that its her words because the book is about her and her gift as a writer, its a beautiful phrase. I chose it for the title because it comes from her but also speaks to all characters. Liberal in the deep south and spent a lot of time arguing with his colleagues and with people about innovation. The middle part of the book, the story of her life was a lot of the typewriters, for the writers who have complicated stories when you try to make sense of the world but im open to suggestions. You have any feelings on that . In that sense, its not my experience as a writer and the characters were all hard to write about for Different Reasons but when it comes to harper lee, i thought shed be the one i had the most in common with but shes a very different writer than i am and she suffered over her work and struggled and in order for her writing to be good, you have to think about it and work hard on it and just be miserable, but thats not my experience. I love my work, i do it mostly with joy and gratitude for getting paid to do it. A lot of people have harder jobs and they work harder and they dont get to do their passion so all kinds of things the way police treat black people so when i sit down to write it mostly easy and fun and i feel lucky to get to do it. Reporting or writing if you had to choose . I love both. When i get bored, its time to start writing and what i work on requires talking to people who study so getting frustrated with the writing, you dont know enough and you have the opportunity to learn from other people so i like them both about the same. Im glad both are part of my life. I do a lot of book reviews and they feel solitary and lonely and i love with reporting, you can pick up the phone and call somebody and think see what they think and talk to with them about their work that i do a little bit of both. You say in your book, nothing like it self and then a space between boarding and writing an abyss. Everyone shows harper lee, the story was destined to be a bestseller but no one could tell her how to write it. Talk about the abyss between the reporting and writing. Thats a fine question and its true, harper we knew about this case after it happened and she went to town and did all the same work i did and shes a better writer than i am and why couldnt she write a book about it . Its simply true the things that happened in the world are chaotic and they do not necessarily have a narrative even though they happen day after day other than chronology, there is nothing that tells you whos right or whos wrong or which scenes are important make sense of the world and we all keep a diary or sit down for dinner and talk about today, you have to making a plot out of this. The abyss she means, i think if youre going to try with beautiful sentences reshape a story that has reverberation, you can start to bring art and craft into it but even figuring out what happens in what order to tell him, thats the abyss. When harper we did all of this reporting and research, she had stacks of papers in her death certificate, the question of who was the main character . Forward the scenes and whos the hero and villain and who should be room for . Theres problem after problem she couldnt figure out how to solve. I do have a lot of sympathy and since the book came out, they struggle with Writers Block and they had a successful book and figure out how to do it again. Someone who wanted to write but couldnt figure out how to do it. They tell you the story of the life or what they want to write about you just think thats perfect, thats wonderful. I want to read that book and the question is, how to get it down on the page. What quotes to use and where to make the chapter break and im sympathetic to it all. Its a lot to decide and it is difficult and it can be done well or poorly so that what i think it was. The truth is, he read, hes got a fine illustration of the difference between the two, its the version of the stories she wrote first and then you read mockingbird and everything is a choice. You can choose chronology, the narration, you can choose which scenes happen and im of the mindset she did a better job in mockingbird than watchmen. They helped her make better choices in her first draft and you can go back to your first draft and realized yes, sometimes the abyss is really wide and hard to bridge. I think malcolm is right, it can be truly sad and it can be burdensome for some people. Another two poet its love and they have a complicated and interesting friendship, but robert lewis and Elizabeth Bishop says she the casual muse who makes every day perfect. Then he says she leaves holes in her poets for ten years on end, spends ten years trying to figure out the right word for something and the poetry she wrote is beautiful but didnt produce very much of it and, i i think partly thats because of this High Standard to go back to Janet Malcolms word, this abyss between what you see and would like to communicate and how you do if the with an inperfecting material which is language. Sympathetic and i just not devoce as cerebral so when i do it i think language is always imperfect and indiana quit inadequate but he have to muddy through. Seem is leak she overwhelmed with her material. Say what you have here is an embarrassment of riches. A nice way of saying yeah, well, she had an embare embare embarrassment of witches. The book did so well, mocking period was an accident jung best seller and she did not have to write for a living. She could live off her royalties and thump being that reinforced the difference function but her work she never had deadlines and never needed anything more than the royalty check from mockingbird and thats part of their story and the part that people who know anything but her live has intimated she was partly stymied by success. The material excels of mockingbird went she was exemption from the normal pressures of writing which is you have to produce to away money with your craft. You say that facts for her were in short supply when she tried to come to grips with the material, yet you were successful in unearthing facts that seemed to have eluded her. How did you accomplish that . Thats a charitable thing so say and i think its not quite true because at the end of the day i had an advantage harper lee didnt which is i was willing to make hear character and she never would health its common in true crime, one of the dominant mode of story telling about crime, the writer or the podcaster tells you all but their experience of trying to learn who did it and how or why some piece of justice was miss cared and theyre a character the store. Harper lee would never do that. She private and only believed in Old Fashioned journalism so she wanted to write this people who experienced the murder, part of the trials, the lawyers and Law Enforcement officers and never tell you what it was like to interview anymore or what she thoughtful it was all embidded in the story and me book is about her life and what made hear writer and interested the case and what was hard for her so i would never casey complain how so and so wouldnt talk. Told you that person was a difficult person for harper lee, and when i said its hard to reconstruct the life of a black sharecropper because Louis Maxwell was a black sharecropper who became a preacher and was in later if you accused of this. I can tell you law hard for harper lee to understand nat and doesnt sound that selfpit using that me as a writer found difficult or i as a researcher to fine it difficult to find the same amount of newspaper coverage but the reverend i could find pout harper lee. So i got include her in things she was never going to do and never bring herself into the story, so that made it easier for me. You were able to write more but Louis Maxwell and his career as a minister than she was able to. I was lucky. His military records turned up. This becomes a kind of show your worth moment and im happy to do it because its not a story of triumph for me. Its a story of a triumph of a lot of archivists and librarians and the military helped me find some of this army records there were extended members of his family who shared things. Digital newspapers archives of the time that harper lee didnt have so i could cast a wide net for any mention of the reverend maxwell and was able to bootstrap that. Somebody who new something told me somebody else who did or someone who had this letter told me about someone wholes might have a letters and i built a superstructure for the reverend out of wpa archives, out of general histories of the counties so i couldnt tell you what his experience on a particular plantation was like, i could look at sharecropper stories from at the era and from that place and time and start to bring it to life, and i think even there, i probably was a little bolder than she was. Its never speculation. Its always built from archives and history but every so often you see me start to put become from the love of the reverend, for instance, his military service. I could talk to historians of the army bases where he served and told youve segregated barracks and i think harper lee was conservative and wouldnt have told you anything more than what she had learned from direct interviews and direct evidence in this era, and that is why my box has so many biographical by sprues and when i quote los angeles ton hughes and what he fulltime to the segregation segregation in the arm and and you know its from langston hues and an opinion piece re wrote but you have to bridge out and if yaw cant you have to tell readers what they may never know. I thought you were able to provide a lot of context, social context, the world in which he lived and also the whole geology of the area where you talked but the town need by the reservoir and the railroad and i thought that was helpful for the reader to see beyond the twodim mentional stick figures youve write out. That is a kind of narration i borrow directly from harper lee. I love the begin offering mock can bird where scout and gemtalk us about what atty cuss and whatever is happened today had to do with what happened yesterday and all the yesterdays before that and i think for me it was so obvious when i looked at this story, harper lee was bon in monroeville but the temperature takes peninsulas in a town called Alexander City and when i go there its a mill town and people who live in and work there if they dont work for the mill, theyre parents did or grandparents did and it was a mill town mechanized by hydroelectric power and port of the story istheway watershed changed and mills mechanized by hydroelectric power. You can not talk about the money and affluence of the community or ongoing exploitation of black work notices worked the nine in the mills unless you explain how the profit structure word and what changed live and why there are up toes of this size. Love history and i do think its the way we make sense of the world and i think to some extent harper leave agreed with that, part of what she is doing and marking birder is tellogy how