Candice Millard wrote The River of Doubt, a nonfiction account of how Teddy Roosevelt led companions to their deaths, was almost eaten by cannibals and wanted to kill himself in the Amazon. She also wrote Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine & the Murder of a President, about the assassination of the brilliant James Garfield and the frantic efforts to save him.
Her most recent book is about Winston Churchill and The Boer War — Hero of the Empire.
So I sat up straight and paid attention.
She delivered an anecdote-illustrated listicle of advice for nonfiction writers who want to dive as deep into their subjects as she’s been able to do.
Advice bullet points are lame, I know, but here is what I have.
• Don’t rush into a story. Before you make a commitment, be absolutely certain it is for you. You must have massive piles of primary sources. You must be able to document what circumstances suggest happened — it’s not good enough to convince yourself. You need to be drowning in source material.
She told us about a book she spent a year pursuing, about 15 years Benjamin Franklin lived at 36 Craven Street in London with the widow of a surgeon, and the piles of human bones found recently in the basement there. Ben wasn’t a serial killer.
The late doctor was an anatomist, and he worked with grave robbers. Also, there was a tunnel connecting his basement to a gallows practically in his back yard. He would barter with the condemned for the right to claim their corpses — a new suit of clothing for their hanging, for instance.
But did Ben go down there? Surely he did, he was a scientist and insatiably curious. But she hasn’t found a primary source to put him in the basement, so she dropped the book project a year in.
• Never send someone else to do your research. Not only will you be at the mercy of their work ethic or lack thereof, but you will miss the wonder of discovery.
In the archive that houses Garfield’s effects, including the bones of his killer (in the same drawer with bones from John Wilkes Booth) she opened an unimposing envelope and out fell hair — fine, pale hair. It was a lock clipped from the dead president’s head.
• Find the expert. For the Amazon book, she wanted to know what tribe attacked Roosevelt’s party. Other historians hadn’t found out. She found the right anthropologist, the one with a dusty map of Amazonian tribes. He was able to poke his finger on the very tribe it had to have been.
• Whenever possible, go to the scene of the crime. At the least it will be an adventure.
She took a hair-rising flight into the jungle and met the very scary tribesmen, who had every reason to want to kill outsiders because they live in a diamond-rich area and are besieged by make-a-buck thugs. The state is too far away to defend them, and so they defend themselves. With poison-tipped arrows.
Not long after she visited, the tribe killed people. She recognized some of the dead as having helped her, but she didn’t feel all that sorry for them.
She told Rashod Ollison (who raised his hand before I did) that her funding comes from the book publishers. She sells them the idea, not the book. They pay in three installments, one up front to allow her to travel. After publication, if it sells, there are royalties.
How does she know when she’s got the story and it’s time to publish what she has? “I always say my only boss is fear,” she said.
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