A Word on Words; 3817; Jacquelyn Mitchard

no no no liz from national television studio way celebrating offers literature and ideas for more than three decades this is word on words with john c johnson in god and welcome once again to word on words my guest today is jacqueline michel heads the new york times bestselling author to capture the heart of a nation was the deep into the ocean her debut novel was named by usa today is one of the ten most influential books of the past quarter century since then she's written over a dozen more book for both adults and children and he's here today to talk about no time to wave goodbye and in that book we

meet again with a capital of the categories from that first knowledge of a lot of the work towards thank you so much for having their capital or as a back there is a captive in this book who asks the obvious first question how could that happen to enable a point now from viewers who didn't read that first blockbuster book and this is another author of the blue didn't read that first blockbuster book the cabin or as family victimized as so many families have been snatching would you talk first of all about this pat let's just quickly review that first story to get to the story of how well they you know they have they lost their son ben

to a what's called a stereotypical kidnapping which it's very rare you wouldn't know from hearing news especially of late that it is so rare and accounts for only perhaps one percent of all abductions which are usually by family members or in custody cases but then was kidnapped returned to his family after nine years and had not ban abused or molested in fact it had a rather normal childhood despite having a mother who was mentally ill but alanna father decided to leave rick engler of the adoptive father as a wire yes and i mean they really mean so they renamed in sam he considers himself still are throughout the deep under the ocean to be sam carrots and out though in this book which take them is not sick but really because it's thirteen years later

to time he's a growing young man who works in a restaurant business with his father cat and that his mercurial mother and his narrative well older brother vincent entered world all roads and lives yes as he can he still considers himself georgia sign scientists enjoy about your kidnapper yet that will move us ships explain just briefly george's marriage was not the best and his wife is a ruth emotionally distressed and so we should say you how george fits into this picture you think under the circumstances or marriage or to be open jail haven't done heart of a marriage that kidnapped his child and help the monitors except he wasn't accepted he married to fall three adult subject and there

was no reason to believe otherwise you don't you wouldn't have said tear tear intended is that your baby you did your kidnapper town and out by the time a gnat only being three years old when he was taken he had very few memories of his family of origin and nine years later he had very few memories of his family of origin it was not like the for example the jc to guard caisson wish you had and know she was eleven years old and she had strong memories of her family and by the way are i just i learned a few weeks ago that she kept a copy out that the patio she actually did shoot gave her whole goal to chat he would someday go oh man that just broke my heart i am and it also lifted my heart because sometimes fiction does serve a purpose because they know it's a fiction book there's not a week groove by a month goes by that we don't hear either an update on oil for abduction an

abduction or hear about a new adoption well they're too well sundance and it is not so in a new world he has produced a documentary on what happened and what you call that documentary and this sort of thing for you of religion won an academy award and bring vincent minnelli well well you can refinance and is on the way to being rich and famous song why did you decide to go back to those wages either revisit this story only just let it stand it lectures and i go to festivals like a festival in nashville and people always said to me what happened to vincent and i do you and suddenly i guess

one day i realize what was obviously would have happened to him he would be a person who would would go into the visual series mom was a photographer what'd he want more than anything is one is not beloved and so he makes this movie which shaq says parents which is a which is the subject of a ticket that are five families who don't know what happened to the children and all to me actually does get great acclaim and then send this is no secret in sin is happy and on top of the world for one hour until someone takes cruel advantage of and are almost impossible situation the regatta his brother's baby is safe with a relative in arm in a well guarded compounds bands child binge china style a little baby he actually lurching yet and us someone is able to through our rooms on convince armed

the sitter who is well known to the cat doors in fact it is they're bad daughter that town that their relatives and are going to bring their baby to the same the girls ward stick you know because the i dreamed of this happen through and she's excited and now a nurse is someone started again no we're going down for a while for a law let me fast forward to the very end of the book like this gives anything away where they come from me worried she come from a lighthearted art she won't have to really really yes and know she i think she came from the future as you see him how to tie the truth i think she was that girl who kept the book sometimes having owls have a funny power and they go someplace on and fetch things

back to the writer that the writer doesn't really understand that book yet a perfectly clear that day but i wanted to redemption for vincent and i know that he wanted so much for that film to be magic and to find a way to actually accomplish something more than i am then simply teaching people about this issue and i think any un years on hold was someone who came from something i didn't know about this book and she was a figure of hope and end the end of the book this book is fortunately gotten very good reviews on various falling one said that she went back to the deep in the ocean which i knew was coming i knew that had a comet and even then it was once ireland angered said you know what's all this stuff about tracking dogs into nine cents and you know she should stick to emotions that's which he is best at but i think emotions are only

revealed through action really i don't think we should just write emotional peak a book about people's feelings anyway so i think she was a figure of a pope and in india of justice gave and down and not to need the end of the book the end of the book is of powerful part andrea how i get away and i tried all right then and let me just tell all of you out there i mean this is a lovable book about a blockbuster book she'd written and indeed to save money who receives about all these abductions employees are brought out two weeping angry the anguished parents and family members this book is a low yeah you know and i had seven children would write about what were obsessed with and he certainly i saw my only up in an old girl

and out and others like her end you know we as shakespeare was writing who have a wife and child is a hostage of fortune so i'm a hostage seven times over to fortune so if you're alone and i'm sure that as a parent you write with a foundation about meth and patton ben and vincent and analyze our own and carrie i mean it's a family is a family that's been torn ripped apart and sending his film and he claimed that it tends to bring them back together but as you say only four piece of the night and then vince baby as he had been kidnapped from snatched taken away from now that immediately brings the cops and

then there is to live and there is humbling understanding the run and there is a certain sheriff's rich you're a former director the drugs all have a part of it seemed like for a thousand years and that's the place that you say is that was that you know say she sat the basement of the police station waiting for something to happen and so it went he's out and i tried it i tried to create as decent a cop as i could who worked in california yeah that's like well you really are they really knew really who was involved in those but the police play an interesting

role for solo and got the war about their jobs find in this how it could've been done on and then they got a be offensive and not understand that their parents and family they're having no problems and and brothers are having a problem and then slam one minute his brother is a hero in the next fan of center and so this film has one targeted monday be cell and you know there's a little at you put a little of the natural elements that he came he can't stop and ben simmons are worries in on this is that i do in my guilty of this naturally resistant and therefore that whole family

was well our position to take on the guilt and they bite him i mean his brother quite naturally finds him and there are tremendously harsh words exchanged and loans exchanges this is of italian american family from the west side of chicago where i grew up and i know that people you know you drop a handkerchief and people are going to get into a fight and this was a lot more than that and actually i i i've enjoyed this so much because these are people i grew up with and dare i say people i have and i understood that families do not unite in a crisis not initially and usually they tear each other apart and crisis so that's what the truth is it's not a treaty wonder reading the book necessary but it does the trick for those of you just tuning in talking with john in the jordan better latest book no time to wait to buy

which is a book about a book and about home if you'd think about that that hostility that a federal law so it evolves along become the time when other family and is part of a surgeon and the me just ask you i know about chicago but i don't know about doing and now tell me about that little town well that's made up that it out of all of my landscapes are fictional bear imagined ideas of chicago and northern california put out what was not a mansion it is that i went in the wilderness on my own at that time of the year and experience those terrible conditions that they experience in trying to find the man who took stella stella and i also know a

woman who has ears and conducts and in a situation like that in which there's snow on the ground is no other way to find a human being rather than to use intercepting dark and the conditions were so dangerous that no one would go in except a private chapter because the police had to think of the safety of their own individuals first and are when they asked the sheriff into rant what would you do if it was your niece and she said i'd hire anyone i couldn't i going there myself they did they did then comes out with bad ankle samples of evidence still on a good hard absolutely again comes out knowing what it is to be a problem in the mail piccolo pythagorean fan you don't make it in the fifties when you know all that's the moment did you know at the

outset you know it killed a shotgun blasts the gullibility get nowhere to go and as a defense attorney he knew exactly what awaited him tom kitt and is a capital crime and that he so he had nowhere to go and he actually was i think he knew that this would be his own death he had lost his best beloved to is child and circumstances that we'll never know whether you know that's part of one of the mysteries in the book you know i can't say that i didn't know what happened to check but the man's daughter had been lost and on its knees and he was mad ever since then very quietly managed angry erin hunter and smart enough to cover that up as so many people are so that certain that that that's where that there is that moment where union

imagine mentioned been several times we know what it's like the very same people on television recently we shared their grief and come to share their joy and dumb stella's young enough that her life is not going to be affected the way her father's lot of bomb but surely she's gonna be mark throughout live long in a way that people will recognize who she was and people don't remember on her as is there some as the fellows sisters were remember exactly who with a grand sisters i want to give you of wave of the grants and i talk about nine says that way before my tank in all flavors it's a famous place no

one knows what happened to the grand sisters but my older my grandparents and older people in my family talked about them constantly talk about what happened to them and so that was the reason that i had those the fellas as you just drop it endures so patricia volk says oh no hitters i remember who can forget that difficult and the fellow's head and in fact in my my next book the book i'm working on now is also inspired by something that happened on the west side chicago when i was just a baby but might start my life was marked by for ever was called the our lady of angels fire it happened in a parochial school in nineteen fifty eight and ninety three children and three nuns were killed in that school fire everyone knew somebody who's brother the cousin had died and online or had survived with

birds and it was the defining moment for that humboldt park neighborhood on the west side of chicago at that obsessed with all my life and my next novel will go back to the west side of chicago and there'll even be a capital no you needed been surprised me to uganda given new life well i couldn't i just couldn't resist it are our girl who survived that fire out like i am but lost her father and her face in it are fathers a firefighter and down and i'm excited as i started to do research because for me it's so these that these characters these people are armed their mind they're my molecules and down so its joyous i don't come back i read every book that i ever read again sat there but it's joyous for

me to do so while i'm sure does when you're when you think of this last book follows kisses a crime sister's marriage we're now going into a historic tragedy a foreigner can legitimately how much historical research the after new of course you can make it a law but to rely on an event like that great tragedy and how much research do you feel compelled to write and maybe as a writer with a journalist more than you know my terror is that even though it's fiction i'll get something wrong like a great novelist has a great friend of mine recently and i recently few years ago wrote a story in which she the husband sold the family farm while the wife was in jail he can to get wisconsin's community property state it can surprise her with that fact

and so she said what's fiction but that doesn't work it used to be a reporter report now that none of you want your rear end thing go on uneven you focus on she got a wrongly i wrong as opposed to staying true narrative that's absolutely right because if you don't get iran to lsu explain and i have that this is a fictional idea oh the west side of chicago there is going to be somebody who says i lived on the corner of foster and grand avenue and there was never missed a chicken there and that's all the only thing that works is going to be able to think about until she writes me a letter so but the the emotional truth and the error any the way that a school could still have structural flaws in the nineties a knopf to burn that deadly that's my test to find out how to find it out from firefighters and i do way too much research way too much

even if it's just for a single line because they may not like it but then it will say oh yes it's my job and my love do consider raising your kids a doctor it's the hardest job i'll ever do raise my children this is the next artist and yes it's my livelihood it's my love and i do consider it a chapter kraft on it i get set up get up in the morning and i put my clothes on and i'll call my here so that i can pretend that i worked at a bank and i'm not tempted to sit and fool around in and make cookies are careful with my kids all they want i go to the place where i work and i work for eight hours and then when they go to sleep at night i sometimes portrayed more because it's a demanding mistresses this cabinet is demanding mistress and you have an interview with

successful well known mystery writer and he said to me and it's a formula for him and he admits if i sit there are trapped in places thirty days on the braille pages in a book it's almost as if he has managed in some way in ways i suspect you have not to remove himself from the work he said ice so were you given gm is going to get and they just a notch work and then you know well sometimes under an hour and sometimes they played wah parker he is a swan human being and he loves his wife more than a very sentimental back and but i know it it'll take me a whole day to write five pages i suffer i'm not a natural i don't have a formula i do have this i know when i began the book what they had to go to the gem i can to make dinner for my

children i can but a part of my mind is always working and when i go to sleep at night i say i'm going to go now and beat with francis fagan and lost her father in the fire i'm going to go be with our with eliza who becomes an interned at a hospital where that face repairs together right of ball never too expensive that means that the iranians running is like a lot of those new fuel it i know it's a luxury that i cannot afford and nor do i want to i think that if i spent years five years writing a book i would feel if i would feel foolish i as i said you know i'm trained as a reporter and we know how to do things not read in a rush but wears on all deliberate speed with all deliberate speed wealth you have written another compelling gripping story and i congratulate you that on that

you know as a cauldron of the storytelling on the nonfiction writing says this story telling you to tell the story so well we've run out of time so that you're juggling thank all of you for watching and dancing and gone forward on words keep reading there