Deadly August love letters, a WW2-era Maddow pod, and more
Welcome back to Blood & Ink
For the better part of August 1922, a philandering minister penned steamy love letters to his married choir-singer girlfriend while vacationing with his wealthy wife on a small island off the coast of Maine. The lovers arranged a rendezvous upon the minister’s return, on August 25, to New Brunswick, New Jersey. Three weeks later, they were dead. More on that further down, but first, a bit of news…
You can expect this newsletter to be separate and distinct from my work at Vanity Fair, but every once in a blue moon, the two worlds may collide, as they did with my new profile of Rachel Maddow, online now and on stands soon in VF’s September issue. Here’s the relevant tidbit regarding a forthcoming historical audio series from the queen of cable news:
Showing me around under a steady drizzle, Maddow talked about the project that had been consuming most of her bandwidth, a historical-narrative nonfiction podcast in the vein of Bag Man, except this time set in World War II–era America. She led me to a second-floor annex that doubles as Mikula’s art studio and Maddow’s home office, with stacks of archival documents neatly arranged on the floor and a whiteboard scribbled with plot points.
The podcast, scheduled to debut this fall, was her first pitch under the Surprise Inside umbrella. “It’s an American history, underappreciated story,” said Maddow, “that has resonance for all these things we’re dealing with today—the threat of authoritarianism and the question of whether or not criminal law is the appropriate venue, and has the right constitutional powers, to handle those kinds of threats. It’s about journalism and journalistic ethics, and the ability of powerful people to manipulate American systems.” (She sold an accompanying book to Crown.)
If that doesn’t wet your whistle, at least head over to vf.com for the beautiful Annie Leibovitz photos.
ELSEWHERE: My friend Marisa Meltzer reviews AGENT JOSEPHINE: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy, by Damien Lewis in this week’s New York Times Book Review. I snatched this one off the display table of my neighborhood bookstore the week it came out last month, but I have yet to crack it open—big backlog at the moment!—so for now I’ll let Marisa take it away: “Lewis employs careful language to hedge the title’s bold assertion. … In his cinematic telling, Baker had a terrible tour of Germany and Austria in 1928, where she experienced firsthand the rise of fascism. During the early days of the war she volunteered at a Paris food bank. She became more active once the Nazis began to occupy her adopted home, signing on with Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, an agency akin to the C.I.A. that worked with the French counterespionage service the Deuxième Bureau. … The book dips in and out of biography, cutting from World War II to her hardscrabble youth … A fascinating subject at a pivotal time in her life, Baker still doesn’t come alive on the page and remains unknowable. … What is compelling is the ragtag, oddly posh crew of supporting characters who surround her in her adventures.” Cannot wait to dig in.
Baker makes a brief cameo in BLOOD & INK vis-a-vis one of my major characters, a spunky teenager named Charlotte Mills who wholeheartedly embraces the flapper ethos. Charlotte also happens to be the daughter of Eleanor Mills, the murdered choir singer, which brings me to the aforementioned love letters between Eleanor and the murdered minister, Edward Hall. A stack of them were found at the crime scene between the victims’ bodies, artfully posed beneath a crabapple tree on an abandoned farm. BLOOD & INK is a bedeviling murder mystery, but it’s also a love story, and those letters helped me bring Edward and Eleanor’s ill-fated relationship to life. The original prosecution transcripts of the letters can be found in the Hall-Mills collection at Rutgers University Libraries, one of numerous archives essential to my research. The collection includes various letters that Edward wrote from his otherwise wholesome August retreat with the missus, as well as a secret love diary he kept for Eleanor during their weeks apart. On my own seaside vacation last week, I couldn’t help but think of Edward scribbling down those torrid missives exactly one hundred years ago, not knowing that his affair with Eleanor would soon bring both of their lives to a grisly end.
Needless to say, the letters were invaluable material for the book. (Pub date is September 13, one day short of the centenary of the murders.) You can’t make this stuff up: “I want letters every five minutes now—I am a Pig pig pig.”
“Crush you and pour my burning kisses on your dear body…”
“Fling your arms now to the wise heavens…”
“D.T.L.”, by the way, stands for dein treue liebe— German for “your faithful love.” That’s all for now! More soon…