Bryn Greenwood & Tom Averill

the story of a wichita woman down on her lot and her unlikely champion straight out of the middle ages and j mcintyre and today on tv are present a reckless both we made by britain greenwood greenwood lives in lawrence she's the author of the best selling all the ugly and wonderful things how often talks to topeka other time april about his two thousand eighteen novel found documents from the life of mel johnson door that book was just awarded the byron caldwell's notebook award from the hall center for the humanities at the university of kansas it will be recognised at the hall center on september twenty fifth but first the reckless of we made by britain greenwood goes on sale august twentieth with events that week in lawrence in wichita bryn thanks so much for coming by to keep your studios today thanks for having me we'll talk about reckless of than a minute but i'd like to go back to two thousand six lane seized a correctional facility just up the road and an escape that involved a volunteer at the prison how did that incident make its way into this

story i think more than anything it's simply introduce the likelihood of all the current problems we're having at prisons in kansas opening the door to states and die i'm just the nature in which there are are fuzzy lines around security prisons when it comes to volunteers my sister used to volunteer in eldorado source familiar with how that worked but seeing that story made me think oh people do get away with things like that well that prison escape is a major plot point of the reckless both we made at the center of the story is actually the sister of that character georgia ladies yourself also known as z tell us about sea busy is very much our wichita girl i'm a born and raised there and she's living on the edge of survival and in the way that

i think a lot of people are these days where money is tight there's no money for every do everything that needs to be done there's not enough money for and so she's always picking and choosing ok which bills get paid which medications get bought because she's responsible for her or for in her invalid mother i'm so she's really just struggling on a daily basis to deal with finances and of course she has health issues she has a show as chronic pain from a hip injury that has made her life just like an extra layer of miserable great to have you read it the very first paragraph of the reckless of we made and just sort of set us up and introduce us to the skull people talk about having an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other i had a pair of imaginary bill collectors so no matter which way i turn there were somebody to remind me i needed money that's how i ended up on a train at four o'clock in the morning with my nephew and a hundred pounds of weed so from the very first paragraph you know that it's going to

be a bumpy ride with his character yes and not just because of the money but because she is in such dire straits that she's making terrible decisions about her life when i was reading the reckless have we made i envisioned georgia as looking a lot like nicky nichols about one of the characters the redheaded character island the early seasons of orange is the new black had tough girl as she takes no guff but she has kind of a soft spot in her hard image and that bit a guard a kind of vulnerability but now that i've met you i wondering if the character of jurors that it may be history it'll cost of the home world i mean she's just characters that i finally let myself writing a novel about a redhead which i've never written a story that hadn't the redhead is the main character ah so let myself do that and you know i wrote very personally from the experience of chronic pain because i also have a hip injury that i've basically the last twenty five years have had chronic pain from not caused by the same thing occurs is caused by that

i am really familiar with how that just grinds you down on a daily basis and especially getting any kind of physical work the main character in the book the reckless of we made is gentry frank who could make me best be described as living in his own upright at a renaissance fair tell me about country gentry is that it controls autistic and day he's like like many autistic people he is very much i am deeply passionate about a few specific things in his cases these super passionate about all things medieval whether it be a medieval literature or our historical medieval combat anything related to that is is of big interest to him and so he tries to live his life that when he is he's essentially trying to live by a short coda which includes him you know abruptly announcing his order that the teaser champion that he's there to protect her whether she really need some are

not when we first made century he's sweeping and to help suzy and her nephew make their way into her mom's house and he's only announcing to reporters to let the lady past and you think really he is heard night in signing armor but then she says i realized what i done it invited my stalker into my mother's house it was literary whiplash who is that diane and what's going on here and i'll play a brand that is the moment that i was totally hooked on this book i write i i feel like you know the starter thing that is more or less a joke but it is a case where you know gentry has literally been waiting in the wings for his moment tim to be her hero he they know each other not very well at all and had met several years before he's convinced that the time is going to come where she's going to need him and of course he's right however he's right about it for years and that's how he's been living his life

and from from zinn's prospective course he's this very odd young man who has been kind to her but that he's just perpetually a presence that that shows up in joe d's in the parking lot of hershey works or drive by or house nothing menacing but he's just omnipresent in that way to j also has that kind of uncharacteristic of speaking only in old english and oddly enough it ends up sounding really natural in his voice hagel did it feel for you to write in the voice of the difficulty wasn't the middle english middle english and i studied medieval literature and college on the difficulty was could i turned actual middle english into something that would still resemble middle english about that the vast majority of readers who have not studied it would still be able to understand what i was saying so i had you know modernize all the spelling i had to clean up a lot of things like that or still trying to keep all the syntax and grammar that's that's part of middle english that we don't really do any more and i had a lot of battles with

a few editors over things too where they would say well this doesn't sound right or in some cases they would say this sounds to harder because there are things in middle english that sort of we've carried through so much debt that a dance towns moderate even though it's not have you had any experience writing an old english before i could be only expensive and was literally writing in middle english for an assignment on and in real middle english rather than in my a sort of fake doubt helped modernized version so as it was weird to sort of be working to make the transition into something else one of their sweeteners scenes in the book the records of three made gentry and his brother trying are teaching sources nephew mark as how to fight that fistfight that as the night said could you read that scene for us brands want to try anyway in the yard he was holding a little wooden sword

and shield yet on the chain mail shirt that came down to his knees and on either side of him stood gentry and trying their swords or would to but other than that they were done up like something out of a movie made shields and all kinds of armor plates on their arms and legs trains armor was mismatched pieces but jen trees was black and silver top to bottom in the grass next to them or their helmets like a pair of metal bucket i plan to walk down and hug markets but he was totally focused on gentry that didn't surprise me so much as the fact that gentry was focused on marcus he was leaning down to talk to him really paying attention to him now that that has seen brother trying a knife fight and gentry was saying telling what balart mr marcus with my nose or cares that touch me marcus hesitated but he reached out and tap his little sore against john trees chest if bunk against his armor tis good gentry sad affair touch again yet mark a spoken with the sword four or five times and then the next time gentry shifted his own sword and pushed marcus's away i stopped the house you get my

sword with yours yeah master marcus to scold perry again marcus tried to touch him again and but not quite sure of himself as he had been and gently pushed is stored away again and if i touch me gentry reached out and tap his sword in the middle of marcos's chest it made me finds but marcus gable gentry get it again and got more bills that has not that i stand the master marcus will not carry me the next time gentry try to tap and marcus put his hand up and pushed the sword away ababa to sort of sharp it is not safe to grasp with five their hand guns the paradise or design this time marcus prices will sort out and tap gentry is not really hard enough to push it away but gently let him well done mr marcus again and now counts values that shield in another couple minutes he had mark is doing something that looked like sword fighting to me trying who've been watching gentry to looked up and saw me standing on the patio behold says lady georgia he said antsy and ceo nick knight that's brenn greenwood

reading from the reckless both we made her latest bike brent talk to me about that seat an interaction between century and markets what marketers having really terrible week because he's essentially been separated from his mother is missing and that things are very confusing and i think for gentry did you really recognize is that living in his own world that he he recognizes the situation the marcoses and his childhood wasn't particularly easy and and i think for them it's really easy to make a connection with markets for that reason like he understands what marcus is experiencing and so he wants to connect and break through that and i think he's a natural teacher bren the title of your book is the reckless both we made what is that reckless of what that singular probably for marketing purposes i feel like there are a variety of reckless going on in this book i feel like really the central one is simply jan trees both to commit to how

busy with whatever she needs to be helped with which ultimately is some very dangerous stuff but he makes that vote anyway without really a lot of consideration for consequences to himself and does she make an as well as she does not even realizing it i think that she'd she makes an oath about the role that she's going to allow gentry to play in her life and from there on out i mean she is she even without maybe acknowledging it yourself has made a commitment to him and that's pretty reckless for her because she's not usually in the business of doing that she's also made an oath to help take care of her nephew markets yes and that's really rather than opposed to say or sister somebody that's really more of an oath that she makes the markets himself on that she is not going to she is not going to disappear out of his life which is harder than we would like it to be for family

members who are parents gentry literally hears voices in his head during this during the storytelling and what to do to giving him advice sometimes giving him very bad advice and it occurred to me a bed that is a brilliant device for an author and allows you to talk about what he's thinking without telling us what he's thinking and for me it transcends device because i think for a lot of people really think of someone hears voices we have the reaction of some characters in the book do which is about someone with a mental illness and that the reality is lots of people here voices and we don't talk about it are friends and i've heard voices and so i was a fairly small child that you can tell people that because as soon as you say oh yes i have i have a voice that tells me this about all the time people are like oh yes she's crazy and so for gently he's very much for sharing space inside his head with these

other people and in that sense it's more than what he's thinking of more than sharing his boss because he is literally you know having conversations with personalities that are not his own it's not just his conscience he speak no no use these are literally separate you know in cities now obviously they're manufactured by his mind but that doesn't mean that they are inherently part of himself and he doesn't view them that way in the same way that i don't you know my voice is being me they are something else in some ways quite annoying an intrusive as his are so it's different joshua has a very complicated relationship with her family with her sister with her mom gentry also has a very complicated relationship with his biological mother and with his adopted family who'd come to embrace the talk about the role of family and what it means to this story

i think for me nearly every story is something about family in and maybe that's a reflection of my own feeling about my family which is very complicated but the thing that's tricky thing where you can't get rid of them there theoretically they're supposed to eat people were always there for us help you though that's not always true and that's you know as is the case with gently where his biological mother not really not really very fond of him although of course that's that's separate from the reality of why she had to give him up and she's very young mother and could not cope with a child who had special needs like gentry but even as an adult where he's a functional adults but she's not really fond of him he's not someone she likes and similarly says he's mother was her but she's certainly not you know her mother's favorite person end and they don't have they don't have a very affectionate relationship they have a lot of conflict surrounding newsies life and her mother's life

choices but then you have this adoptive family bed come to embrace century end and the scenes of them are just heartwarming i think obviously not all adopted families did things work out because adoptive families have all the same dysfunctions that biological families have but i think for a lot of adoptive families it's simply it's easier to embrace things that are outside of your ideal because you've made this choice you're like ok well yes i know this child has problems but i'm choosing to take him into my family and now he's family no matter what his problems are and so i do know some adoptive families where i feel like they are more welcoming because they already have practice at various biological families like oh here's your baby taken from the hospital and then you just have to sort of figure it out but it's your baby you're stuck with that you haven't chosen really necessarily to make it part of your family

you just mentioned showers isn't mom see is a hoarder which adds its own set of complications to seize life talking about that aspect of the story i know people have i've probably watched all their unit was a big trend for a while of shows about hoarding on and in some ways that shows get right but in other ways they did i don't think that they can ever really get out what it's like to and i come from a family of hoarders so it's that thing where and some level it seems totally normal but as you you know you grow up and around the world you sort of realized oh this is not this is not normal this is not how most people live and it becomes it becomes this massive burden on the whole family and i have a very good friend of my also his mother is a quarter and that's when it becomes is that all of these objects become not just the responsibility of the person who's collected them but then

their immediate family members and it becomes this whole notion of all if your family member is the hoarder get sick or dies suddenly you've inherited all the responsibility for all this stuff of questionable value and it really does it's it's like this strange illness because it's meant toll but it occupies so much physical space and they literally get in the way as the being able to be home to be around her mom ryan within the story as he leaves home as a teenager because there's literally nowhere for her to sleep but she comes over school one day her mother has taken over her back to last her last bastion against the stuff for her bad as been taken over now she can't sleep at home and it sort of sets the tone for a lot of the rest of her life that descends batch there is no place where she is really a whole jurors heard her sister lorraine i'm not

saying that right long run more rarely gentry talk to me about the names the you've chosen to the characters in this book well it's this thing where i think a lot of we get a lot of social commentary about armed black families and black meaning traditions that are what are considered non traditional but you don't have to go very far into the wilds of misery or oklahoma to meet that exact same element with envy either whirlpool white community where there's this desire to give your child an unusual name and often and names that appear perceives as being sophisticated her elegant arm all it really does is sort of signal to everyone else there you know you're you're poor white trash and so say you have you know the georgia has this very sort of elegant sounding name but it also is not a common name and it's also you know so far outside the balance of commonality that the ticket it really signals are out as

being like oh there's something on all that family and similarly low rent you know it's meant to make her sound like she's a queen but it also signals to everyone that her family is not really all that sophisticated and three through their gender that such a subject he was its name i feel like i mean i think that i went to school with european supply guys named gentry although it's pronounced jeffrey where i came from you know i don't i haven't read that name of like the landed gentry is and that's why you know for a certain you know this is economic class that seems like a very sophisticated name because it does imply a wealth and standing but you only ever meet guys named jeffrey who are you know rednecks would beat up pickup sends and who live in a trailer and to work on a farmer because you know they're great guys that that is one of those names again gives away

that they don't come from wealthy family so it becomes almost this this mirror reaction where the wealthy don't give their kids' names like that not an american athlete in europe are still some very and usually three traditions back home i'd know manning paisley once but very wealthy family i was a traditional family name worse really poor families are giving their kids these unusual names to try to make it seem more sophisticated there's a scene where john kerry and the art camping and see describes being whipped and treat this way i felt better knowing he wasn't there it's like being alone but not alone i guess mostly happens to us with people we know really well i'm like i always have that feeling when i'm with my sister that is will sit in a room for hours and in fact already have the perfect vacation is sitting in a room reading books so as we traveled other places to

sit in a room and read books and we often get home to our but it's that same sensation of like someone that you don't feel it doesn't feel performative arm and for whatever reason being busy reaches that was gentry and that he does not seem to expect anything for her he does not make any demands of her arm it's ok to just be quiet around him and so being somewhere where pelham i think it's safe for her like she's alone he's not to bother her is not going to demand that she speak to him or pay attention to him but she's you know not alone he's there he's also not going to demand anything physically are essentially from her oh no because you know yes he has very firm boundaries an ad for a lot of autistic people into those boundaries are about just comfort level is not having you know unexpected physical contact out what's realistic is the situation is it's not that he's opposed to this book i think he just has to prepare himself

for the possibility and so nbc is good because she's had some experience with non consensual physical contact that makes her very aware that it's important to note that the other person and is allowing you to touch but rather than you just doing it on your own in the preface to the reckless of we made you say that the city's weakness is her loyalty and that centuries loyalty is his strength that's marketing speak but just for a little in math for gentry the thing that has really propped him up for his whole life is just this really packed like he doesn't let people go on for the most part it if they are willing to to be you know in some sort of relationship with them he will stick with them for as long as that's true whereas for xiv being loyal has had really terrible consequences for me because of course the difference being if you're well to someone who betrays year oh it's terrible often where is gentry for the most part

has has chosen wisely and has been loyal to people who need to return that feeling brand your previous work all there ugly and wonderful things did very well commercially it was a new york times bestseller how is that changed writing for you or has it hasn't changed the writing process which will probably be troubling news to my age and i which is that i'm still entirely writing what i want to write in the term so i want to right arm which maybe doesnt make publishing super happy with me but in terms of like my daily life it's it's been a huge change in that i quit my day job which is nice because after you know ten plus years of working eighty hours a week you know you go to your day job and then you come home and write for forty hours a week it's exhausting so i feel like ed and the french army is giving to right now and so the exhausted me if they continue at greater liberty to write more about what she write without having to worry is a scanner so i'll come not so much in those terms i mean my goal

has been not to know over right because i'm like ok now this is my full time job which means i you know write and i work under fifty to sixty hours a week on but honestly and i've always written what i want to write and for longtime publishing thought i was terrible for that nobody wanted my will in fact all the ugly wonderful things although it was a huge success as a huge success after a hundred and twenty two agents said no we don't think we can sell this this isn't the sort of book that the publishing lots well it turns out they were wrong arm but still publishing i think looks at me like what is she going to do next and will it in fact selling books and i'm sure they look at the records of you made that way because of the middle english because of a lot of the other things so other common threads that you see through your writing career i definitely because i'm always writing about dysfunctional families and i'm always writing about people who

don't necessarily fit in the way they're supposed to fit in a man's i'm always writing about really inappropriate or awkward sex is that air so there are there are there are these common things that that are happening in all my books because there's things that i'm obsessed with i'm obsessed with the issue of consent which is why all my books are about that bring greenwood as the author of the reckless both we made it when you got a number of events coming up in connection with the release of this but i do the data comes out is august twentieth albeit billboards public library of the raven bookstores hosting me there with lawyers public library which is at seven pm and then the very next day i will be in wichita hosted by watermark books that at six pm and then i go on a whole series of things to edmund oklahoma tulsa oklahoma and then further further afield than that the reckless and three made is the latest novel by bringing green would brand this has been such a pleasure congratulations on a great book and best of like tia thanks for having me kansas

public radio has a copy of brain greenwood spoke to give away if you like a chance to win the reckless of we made leave a comment on k pr as facebook page i'm kate mcintyre just ahead to peek at other times april talks about his latest work found out he rents from the light out now johnson door that says kbr prisons continues right after this ms bonnie university of kansas this is kansas public radio weird nine he won five lawrence and nine he won three oscar in junction city support for katie are present and kansas public radio comes from the murk co op cafe located within the lawrence public library the co op cafe offers moore made coffee cookies sandwiches and fell much more open daily intel six pm and from eagles rests in lawrence

now hearing norwegian made stressful its brand recliners theater seating and office chairs by the corners online at eagles rests natural home he died i'm kate mcintyre you're listening to k pr presents on kansas public radio to be cut other time a girl is a frequent guest on this program and elsewhere on k pr his latest book found documents from the life of mel johnson door just received a bahrain caldwell smith book award from the hall center for the humanities at the university of kansas a girl will be recognised at a book reading an awards ceremony at the hall center on september twenty fifth for the rest of this hour tom avril talked about found documents this conversation was originally broadcast on keep your presents on february twenty five two thousand

eighteen saturday's february sixteen to eighteen sixty seven lawrence kansas your brother i can find my search for fossils is not a sign of a grieving demented mind as you seem to think instead after the loss of solomon by scientific pursuit i am reading studying learning and discovering all i can about the ancient creatures that inhabit in the same place i know walk every day says solis i know that i walk upon layer above layer of life and their support that's time ever reading from his latest novel found documents from the life of mel johnson door tom as always it is great to have you here the script to be reviewed day before we talk about the title character now johnson door ty first about her

husband solomon door and his connection to kansas where he's like her from arkansas and and they meet because both of their parents are are involved in in the underground railroad and so when she marries solomon they decide when lawrence kansas and kansas territory open if they're going to go to lords to join me in working with the abolitionists and on the underground railroad so solomon dedicates himself to that and he's a rule that zealous early pioneer of look of lawrence kansas and their claims a lot of the land for chile enough land that when you dies in corporal charade knows it will sell some of that property in an support herself let's talk about controls' rate because as you said solomon dies in commercials raid and it's oh obviously a life changing

event for now in a couple ways obviously see loses her husband cd comes in the patently wealthy but also see discovers something in her basement aussies had a try and the irony i think and this is what got me started in the book really is this character now who's found in the normal road in a burning cabin her mother is is get her father's been hung the cabin burned by desperadoes or whatever and analysis barely alive so in thinking about this book i just thought what i would have when no country kansas he ends up just like when she was a baby she's in a foundation of a home it porch of a home is on fire and she and he lost everything everybody that due to her she's also already lost a couple of babies distilled worse herself earlier and that she alludes to in the

book she's lost everything and then she sees in the foundation rock fossils he's creatures and shoes were thinking rock of ages and in singing at him to yourself and then in the rock shoes he's really literally the rock of ages like she sees these fossils and there both living in denver it is and i think he just past to find out what these creatures or who once inhabited this place she calls of her salvation in stone because it gives her this purpose in this meaning if he can just discover what these things are you learn about them and what they mean for her that in some ways you can discover herself in her own at her only and so it's at pattern that i saw early on with your character that i want to follow through

plus and so very interested in just amateur science in and we had our intern the world of imaging fifty nine only five years after nailing solomon come to kansas territory says he discovers this this newfound love of amateur fossil exploration and it really transforms her life but obviously this is a time where a way men paleontologist were that was not a thing matt had some intelligence he faces yes it was not by she's frowned upon for her interest in science first of all especially by the church which is kind of struggle with this new sense of time is not the creation of four thousand years ago or seven thousand years ago or the big sort of biblical a sense of of the earth's age but the scientific sincere services to believe is your engine the conflict with first of all with the church and then with other women you know what terry

what you're doing a walking the hills and pull offs making friends with people like yu kameron the kansas hermit going going up to this fledgling university in trying to find mentors you're going to be inevitably mail hasn't been a widow woman how onto ward is that you you know wandering the countryside along unaccompanied by a man you're taking care of all your business affairs by yourself and doing it in a very independent way you know stopped going to church for a while be because of some of those pressures so ese she realizes that she looks a little bit following an nba one letter that she writes your sister she she says i see how either see me and

they think of me as fallen and she said i have fallen i fall into the earth i've fallen to rock i fall into this the study she is she's the person who becomes i'm obsessed literally with having to do this past to do this and she never she never question of herself and her interest in that which is something i really admire about her that she just it persists in her desire to learn and the more she learned the more good thinking she doesn't she becomes better at what she's already good at which is funding fossils but veteran law he now i'm not thinking about why they're there and eventually gains the respect of that the natural history museum in washington dc is he sending a fossil so the judge to dismiss who's there and eventually attending some conferences in emporia kansas of the kansas academy of science and then later one in washington to sell in some ways it's a success story but it's it's also a story of

hard persistence and her success is not just in paleontology an invertebrate paleontology in the study of brian's on fossils but it's really success in finding her own power and her her own making her own world the way she wants to make and one point you're first worse off as a dirty hester prynne reference to the scarlet letter yeah there are fossils are her little pearl his precious things that nobody quite understands why she is how she got to the time you're a writer you're not yourself a paleontologist talk about the research you did in writing down documents well it was a wonderful journey i've always had an interest in kansas and ken has been part of the inland sea kansas having

so much rich history when it comes to just to the discovery of fossils and so on i've always enjoyed collecting fossils where i could find on my father in law jim downey isn't was a geologist and he works for oil companies but he was always extremely interested in telling us about you know this is a pennsylvania this is you know the different different layers and ironically he had a cabin in new mexico where we find some of the same fossils at eighty five hundred feet in pennsylvania rock as you can find in kansas in pennsylvania rogers is really on sense of space and time you get with a note and giuliani had a huge fossil collection alone and we have quite a fossil collection that have for years and years to light and i knew i wanted to do something with that at some point the trick is of course is that you said during the research was first of

all figured out what kind of fossil know might be best that finding and i want to keep her in eastern kansas i did go on a little field trip out to the strandberg museum and talk to the wonderful paleontologist mike everhart who wrote ocean's of kansas and he took this on the back kind of behind the scenes tour of the term bric <unk> wonderful wonderful stuff the big fish with the big jaws addicts he says the sharks are here the whole romance of of the ocean of kansas a nifty end of our time i say well you know i think i maybe i'm going to have no study brian's on fossils what you think and he said i think you have a boring book because it is true that last bra as owens and we know for sure they're bright zone are not extinct and they still exist in warm climates are kind of like choral other species of them that are extinct and their courtship think in kansas because

environment no longer supports but the studying something that i didn't know much about and had to learn a lot about and then the trick was not just learning a lot about brides on fossils but learning what people knew about brides on fossils and this each step from eighteen sixty three were no its interest in until eighty ninety and them the current history of science then became really interesting as well very fine in early aging fifties book called the rocks of kansas in which people are still arguing whether there are layers of pennsylvania into in the state in what kinds of very early on he's trying to map out and in a way i felt sort of like nail her shelf life i was discovering just as she was discovering reading the material that you might've read re reading darwin and darwin made this call him he in his origin of

species should the record is not complete you know i mean we need more evidence an amateur scientists began to call out just i like the early transactions of the cans academy of science and the monolithic ends academy of sciences oldest academy west of the mississippi in kansas and they're having their annual conference this april at washburn and so the washburn challenges were the very first people involved in the kansas academy of science so it's nice it's returning to washburn for this for this sounds this conference is here so i i look to a lot of the transactions they're called transaction is basically just a publication so many of them are just less of it birds that were cited that were seen for the first time this is like rounding out of clacking what's here in the state lizards

knockoffs butterflies and equip them another character from star in the book who sally miller who is an amateur let the doctor as you do collecting butterflies specimens him i'm i'm fascinated by sort of early science and in kansas is roland in geology with adam benjamin my jews and in a book he is a real person he he is of a man who actually very serendipitously i found this out i knew about him but he had come to kansas to settle and quinn borrow which is right in on the missouri river to work on the underground railroad as an abolitionist just like now he was a lawyer and then he got interested in nature and in fossils and rocks until he started collecting himself and then he was fairly much self

taught has our first a geologist who took his cabinet of curiosities were so many nineteenth century scientists had to kansas state agricultural college and he and francis no okay you listen much more interested in birds and living things snow is famously said to him you studied paul studies of living you study the dead has so much became their that the fall for guy and put money in sandy williston who was a dentist an agricultural college and a k they both took expedition doubt the western kansas since found the shark's teeth and the band the big the big monstrous as well and an older sticks with her brothers all as i spent hours at the invertebrate paleontology lab i'm here on the k u campus in the archives at spencer here in the archives it case date

studying mirjan williston and people that they have papers la the time that walk and museum just a lot of research involved with it but it was kind of the same kind of research my character would have been doing and so you just said this in the book and now it says she's learning about fossils and herself you're learning about fossils and you're also learning about scientific inquiry at that time yes and that income of the scientific mind in and how it works and i am a voyage of science especially in and mire of people like ian oliver sacks for example here's a real influence on this book his i started reading his son has autobiography a memoir called on the move but it was called envy

that's the way he's the way he thought about what he was a real admirer of nineteenth century scientists and critically medical doctor because he was he was a person who didn't trust instant diagnoses people who just saul some were labeled them as sir hugh he's saxton his whole life in narrative telling stories about people with certain brain impairments and so on which in awakenings and the man who mistook his wife for a hat and books like that and he himself and read a lot of nineteenth century medical accounts because as we find out what really was going on with people they even have a name for it they were just describing a series of simple but they didn't a narrative style that's what i love so much about oliver sacks and nineteenth century circus it's interesting then at that time the body of knowledge really relied on amateurs people that didn't have any scientific training you know you think of them

in this day in age as an image or fossil collector that it it seems almost pretentious to think that you might have something you know of real value to add to the body of knowledge that at that time that was really who is on the ground doing the work to try and win some major collections and uneven hear an unknown in lawrence there's a character in the book who's actually real character joseph savage who's mentioned a few times and in the book he wrote he was a another amateur fossil hunter who sent his work to washington dc and he lived in lawrence kansas and then studied what he could but he was no he was not a scientist to it yes i've really relied on that now not so much for a few projects where people have to observe things in their immediate environments and data to shoot these huge databases on computers that sort of them contemporary equivalent of

that but back then you could get a paper in the transactions of the kansas academy just by being an observant human being loosened the indictments himself was a boy who just love to rove around and he discovered specimens and he brought them to the universe in people realize gee he had a scientific danton and he started studying adnan look what he created that the dire ramit and traveled all over the world so he'd have his to kansas board the l clicking lizards interest of things i'm visiting a time ever all his latest book is found documents from the life of mel johnson door time i have to admit i wrote the first fifteen pages of this book and i use this fix her nonfiction i went back to the beginning re read the first fifteen pages and i ok you i praise services fix in this designer of archival

fixing well i've always enjoyed including documents in my work or whether it's poems the song's recipes could teach you those those kinds of fake fake documents and and i was attracted to the notion of writing a book that would win have the scope that this one has for making fifty for just the timeline eighteen fifty four to eighty ninety how do i tell no story what narrative technique to i use how to how to how to do that you're going to write about her own right as her i decide you know is if i can do it all as that our myself in various archives doing research and i just thought why does create an archive that i can

pretend i have and researching it and so that way i don't have to do a lot of chronological transitions i don't have to say it she walked across a room you know and is nil nil as a diarist and she's a letter writer and so she's doing what all direction letter writers do is which is to kind of self consciously chronicle your life for yourself and then for others around you and i thought that would be a good strategy i i can have her deciding what's important on any given day and my sake editor says well there's a lot of entries you win or read the heart today you know will be out or ripped my dress like a lot of those fans it and i can pretend to pick out those moments they're really important where she's challenging other issues challenging herself she's making decisions he making notes about a speech she wants to give to the church ladies tell if she's

kind of back into the fall and i don't have to have that one or two each year or even if i don't want to i can tell a story by letting her tell her story and there were times when i really did feel like i was in an archive i want one of my young writer for and then lerner carrie stephens harriet lived in lawrence once wrote that writing is missing really close reading i think about that as a writer that sometimes you write one word and the next word sort of appears almost like you're reading as well as writing it and i wrote a lot of this book longhand on purpose because i want that pace that no would have been in writing the diary ended and the letters and so and some such sometimes i really felt like i was not

writing but i was transcribing went and what was there just sort of kicking to me of course i did research reading the diaries and letters from that time period and if it's a time for the voyage been interested in as some money top kansas literature and i've read read so much of the nineteenth century cans of writing so it just struck me as a good a good strategy for telling this particular story as you said this is a work of fiction and yes there are real people scattered in and out of it i'm curious about the campus her mic was that real person yes you cameron is a famous lawrence person he he he came here after well fairly early on and and he was a music general and after the war some say

that he he had a love affair that went bad and sort of became a hermit he lived in where the music that plea p l plant is on the bluffs of the of the river just just north and west of of lords and that was cameron's bluff was called and he lived for a wildlife out there by himself he later moved into town and there's a little plaque dedicated to him and the pinckney neighborhood that you can still go and visit today and he lived in a treehouse so he was very eccentric i can actually in a you live in a trait yes and like my brother rip a rule has has done some to kameron sketches before early on to entertain people in an especially kids and my friend stever was doing a lot of research on hugh cameron is you so interested in in him cameron was a little famous walker he hated public transportation a railroad and so on and he was reported to have

walked to each presidential inauguration from lawrence to washington dc where he had once lived no i do have no accompanying him on one of those journeys she and she doesn't get four with him but that's where she meets ellie miller and missouri and that such a serendipitous thing for her but you came along was just i was really interesting figure and so i felt like i had to include him and i had a very serendipitous thing happen you have no meeting him because she she'd be very interested in cameron lost because of bob offers a great place to find fossils so she's meandering toward toward that part of the river along the river bluff far above the river and he kind of trespasses on his territory and he let her know that she met his army doesn't appreciate that she also discovers some letters which were from the former romantic interest cut and making all this combining

historical reality with fiction and historical fiction book one afternoon i'd spend about three hours photographing invertebrate briars on fossils at the invertebrate paleontology letter k you i ran across in a box a little specimen their own little boxes in iraq they all say where they were found and by who and when and one of the fossils prize on fossils was identified as being from camera and bluff so i thought one of those moments for his new project you have maybe maybe this could've happened they got were smiling i knew their yes they were and i was tired and after photographs of the three r's a variety of assad blum there's cameron of their time we open the hour with an excerpt from found documents can i see you to read another excerpt sure of the

very last entry doesn't really give anything away pages were talks about nails attitude about her life might be a good one it's a diary entry from july twenty second at ninety minutes it's after her after the death of her mother her adoptive mother called her mother go and father robert has already died her sister showed her all the letters and also center of the geoduck a rock the spin that was found near where she was born and it's it has sat on the mantle piece and no one ever broken open so if she gets in and i just read this very left diary entry the stone is a dod and it rested on the mantle so long we did not even notice it that it was gathered from the place of my birth and near death has shocked

me how much else was kept from me or my circumstances before robert and joe johnson rescued me from a smoldering kammen unclaimed me as their own who were my parents' child always be doomed to live many lives to be many persons kb own and became known johnson no johnson became this is solomon door this is solomon door bk widow nor widower door became the shunned a fossil hunter and scandal the show and a fossil hunter and scandal became a respected supplier of the national museum respected supplier became a writer whose words were presented to the national academy and now she becomes a lot less child sent a rock for her heritage i broke the rock one clean bit of hammer on chisel each half was a cave full of purple crystals amethyst like sharp cheese jaded mirroring light color softening at the

point of beauty hidden all these years my father knew what was inside he wanted to break the rock but he did not as i have learned from my own studies much of what we know is on the servers only many think we're not meant to delve deeply we are afraid to break the rock who knows what we might find inside i have broken iraq and found beauty over and over i had broken the rock that's time ever a reading from found documents from the life of mel johnson door time thank you so much for coming in today thank you so much for having me and what a lovely conversation really appreciated time avril was just named the recipient of a two thousand nineteen byron caldwell's smith's award for found documents the award ceremony will be held at the hall center for the humanities at the university of kansas and september twenty fifth

you can find a longer version of our conversation at our website kansas public radio dot org and j mcintyre keep your present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas