Beyond This Place of Wrath and Tears by Jack Ford

In this episode of Historical Happy Hour, host and bestselling author Jane Healey sits down with acclaimed journalist and novelist Jack Ford to discuss his newest historical fiction novel, Beyond This Place of Wrath and Tears. Inspired by the true story of trailblazing WWII correspondent Lee Carson, the conversation dives deep into the remarkable life of a fearless woman who covered major moments of the war—from flying over D-Day beaches to entering Paris before its liberation. Ford shares how Carson’s legacy had nearly vanished and how her forgotten dispatches helped him capture her voice. The episode also explores Ford’s creative process, the Cold War espionage twist he imagined for Carson’s post-war life, and the enduring importance of historical fiction in illuminating untold stories.

Transcript

Jane: 0:02

Welcome to Historical Happy Hour, the podcast that explores new and exciting historical fiction. I'm your host Jane Healey, and in today's episode, we welcome award-winning journalist and author Jack Ford to discuss his latest novel beyond this place of wrath and tears. Um, it's based on the true story of World War II reporter Lee Carson. And it released May 27th. Thank you, Jack. Thanks for doing this. Welcome.

Jack: 0:26

It is my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. I've seen several of these and they're always informative and entertaining, so I'm delighted. Be a guest with you.

Jane: 0:34

Thanks so much. I'm gonna do a quick bio on you and then we will jump right in'cause I have probably too many questions. Will take up too much time. So, Ford is an author and journalist whose career as an American news personality has spanned more than three decades. Following his early career as a prominent trial attorney, he transitioned to television news and has worked as an anchor correspondent for N-B-C-A-B-C-C-B-S-E-S-P-N Core tv, and most recently hosted Metro Focus Focus on PBS. He has received three me awards, a PBD award, three American Radio and Television Awards, a National Headliner Award, and a March of Dimes FDR award. He is the author of two acclaimed historical fiction novels, chariot on the Mountain, and His Latest Beyond this place of Wrath and Tears, which we're gonna talk about tonight. Again, welcome.

Jack: 1:20

Okay, thank you so much.

Jane: 1:21

Thank you. So, um, this is about work correspondent Lee Carson. Um, and it's about her life before and dur, no, during and after the war, after World War ii, how did you learn about her and how'd you end up deciding to write a novel about her?

Jack: 1:38

You know, as an author yourself, historical fiction, some, some of you're centered on World War ii. I've always been a, a bit of a student of World War ii, you know, as a history major in college. And I, I read. Everything I can get my hands on. As a matter of fact, I'm delighted. I told you I just ordered two of your books. Thanks, uh, you. I'm thrilled to have them here. So I, I read everything I get my hands on and one of my favorite authors, um, nonfiction writer British writer by the name of Ben McIntyre. Ben McIntyre, just a marvelous chronicle right of World War ii and his books tell the stories and the deceptions that the allies engaged in to, to try to put the Nazis off in terms of where D-Day was going to be taking place. They're just fascinating books. And I was reading his most recent one. This is a couple years ago now, and it, it, it's called Kitz and it's about the Kitz Castle, which was a 13 hundreds fortress in Austria and was utilized by the Germans during World War II as a PRIs prisoner of war camp for high value prisoners. High value meant basically ones that kept trying to escape. From other prisoner war camps. And also towards the end it became the location that they used for the big name prisoners. So Churchill's nephew was held there. The son of the US Ambassador to Great Britain was held there. So it, it was a fascinating place and just the structure itself, 12 foot thick concrete walls were interesting. So the book basically chronicles the story of through the five years of the European War about cold its castle and how it was used. And towards the end I get to the chapter where it's being liberated by allied troops, by American troops. And he wrote in the book he said, as the enormous open doors swung open, he said there was nearly a riot because walking in with the allied troops was this, his words smashing looking American war, corresponding Lee Carson. And he talked about the fact that literally her being there and she was by all accounts, extraordinarily beautiful. Uh, also by all accounts, extraordinarily smart. Fearless charming. So he, he devoted almost a full chapter to talking about her and some of her history and some backgrounds, and, and my first response was, this is fascinating. Why don't I know anything about Lee Carson? And as you know, as a writer, when you come across something like that, that fascinates you, you wanna learn more. So I started doing research, found some books that were that were written right about year or two after the end of the war, talking about the various correspondence there. Curiously, there were only a handful of women. And it's, you know, and even those women were, there were enormous restrictions put on them. Originally, they were told, you can't go to the front lines. And they'd say, well, we have to report from the front lines. They said, no, you're women. You can't be up there, you can't go any farther than the hospitals. Lee Carson broke all those rules, as did many of the other women. I found some books talking about her. I discovered she had died fairly young in a, in like 51, 52 years old.

Jane (2): 4:47

Mm-hmm.

Jack: 4:47

Um, no children, so no direct heirs to fan the flames of her legacy. But I was also struck by how successful she'd been as a reporter. She received a medal of honor that went to reporters, not the Congressional Medal of Honor, but a different one, journalistic Medal of Honor. And it was interesting, Danielle, appreciate this. I, I found her obit in the New York Times. It was two paragraphs. I thought, how could that be? Right? And my first thought was, if she passed away today with that kind of background, she'd be a half a page of the New York Times, maybe more.

Jane (2): 5:22

Mm-hmm.

Jack: 5:22

So it, it, it, it struck me in immediately. I said, you know what? I gotta tell her story. I find out more about her because this is a story that needs to be told.

Jane: 5:32

Yeah, it's amazing when you find those lesser known people. I, I mean, I, we were just talking like, I've written three World War II novels. I had vaguely heard of her, but really didn't know anything about her. And I, I read the obituary you included in your, in your press materials, and I, it's shocking. It's shocking that she's not more well known.

Jack: 5:50

Yeah. Yeah. Because if, if you look at what she did, and this is, it's fiction, historical fiction, you know, the essence of it, the incidents are, are true. They all happen. Everything I have her doing in this book, she actually did. She was there. She, she, I said to somebody, she was kind of the Farrest Gump of, of, I was thinking that when, yeah. That's

Jane: 6:11

so funny. I almost put that down. I'm like, is that insulting to her? But yeah, she almost,

Jack: 6:15

yeah, she, she was everywhere. So in, in telling her story, I kept those core events. I used many of the actual characters that, that were with her. I, you know, I changed the names. Some are composites, a couple I had to create just to kind of move the narrative along. But I, I think probably the best thing was, the most helpful thing for me was that I was able to get access through her newspaper archive to dozens of her dispatches that she had written from the front line. And, you know, she has an interesting style. She's very kind of first person and slang and makes you feel you are right with her, you know, in the Jeep while you're, ducking this aerial bombardment. So I, I think finding a little bit more of who she was from some other people's biographies and writings, and then finding her writings her writings, gave me a glimpse into her soul. You, as you know, as a writer, you can learn a lot about somebody by reading what they wrote.

Jane (2): 7:18

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um,

Jack: 7:19

so, you know, so it, it allowed me to start getting a fuller picture of who this mysterious and undoubtedly heroic woman was.

Jane: 7:29

Absolutely. And actually you answered my next question, which is, how did you find her voice and figure out how to write and like really get, get to know Lee Carson as and enough that you could write a story centered around her life. And because that's, it's hard. And especially when she's lesser known, you know, she wasn't famous and so there's less out there. But, uh, one thing I appreciated too, you sprinkled articles throughout the book

Jack: 7:53

that Yeah, I'm glad you, I'm glad you enjoyed that.

Jane: 7:54

Yeah. So did you, are those. Actually her articles or are they They are.

Jack: 7:58

Okay. They are amazing. There are one or two. So again, what I did is, yeah, again, her bio, extraordinarily intelligent. She started Smith College when she was 14 years old.

Jane: 8:08

Amazing.

Jack: 8:09

Dropped out at two years old because she wanted to be a journalist. Uh, fearless. Spent. Folks have heard of the Battle of the Bulges. You know, one of the last great battles of World War ii, she was there on the front line. She spent Christmas Eve Christmas Day in a foxhole with soldiers ducking artillery. She was charming. She realized in order to get access to story, sometimes she had to flat out charm people. And as I said before, she was she received an award from the Washington, dc uh, a journalist organization as the best looking correspondent in dc. She had all of those features that, contributed to who she was and what she did. But again, as you know, when, when you're trying to write realistically, you, you have a backdrop, factual backdrop for World War ii. So I had these battles, I had all of these things that she was involved with, certainly, but then I had to figure out how do I weave her into it? And it was her writings, and her voice, as you said, it's essential to find her voice. So I, I sprinkled throughout the book when I'd be talking about an episode. She and a couple of other journalists discovered the smoking wreck of a Nazi work camp that nobody knew existed. They were out looking for a munitions plant and they literally stumble across the smoking wreckage and, and just the horrible, terrible nature of this and some survivors. And in, in, in reading what she wrote. You could get a sense of how she felt. She struggled to remain somebody who was objective all the time, but you could see sometimes she lost that objectivity because it was her own personal humanity. So I, I have the article she wrote after that finding there. So I, I try to sprinkle the articles amongst each of the chapters where she wrote about what we're either going to now we write ourselves or just write about. There were one or two, which I actually had to create.

Jane (2): 10:06

Okay.

Jack: 10:07

Just to kind of stitch the story together. And I was actually quite proud because I mentioned the acknowledgements. My, my wife is, we've married 50 years and, you know, she worked to put me through law school and, you know, and all, and she's my first editor. Every thought, every idea, every word she looks at, and there were a couple of the articles and when she read them. She didn't recognize them as that I wrote them. Oh, nice. And she said, oh, you know, just another one from Lee. And I said, oh, thank you. I said, you could not have given me a greater compliment that thinking that what I wrote just sounded like something that Lee Carson would've written.

Jane: 10:49

Oh, that's excellent. So, so good. So tell me I, or actually tell the audience, because I read the story, um, you talked about her being like the Forest Gump of the European Theater of Operations, like talk about, so she was, among other things, she flew over the invasion sites at the start of D-Day. What are some of the other things that she, like, historical moments she witnessed?

Jack: 11:12

I thought that was amazing. And again, again, if, if I had made all of these up. You probably would've said, yeah, that's kind of a lot really. Right. You know? Yeah. But the reality is, every one of these instances, she was there. So we mentioned she talked herself onto a bomber flying over the D-Day beaches. There were no correspondence, uh, at the beaches on D-Day. They came in shortly afterwards, so she charmed herself onto, and actually was, was written up on charges. By the Allied forces because she broke the rules to do that, and she had to kind of talk her way out. She had a couple of instances where she was charged with violating the rules of correspondence, so that was one that she got to do. She was among, there was a, a, now a lot of people had claimed to have been the first ones into Liberated Past. But what I wrote seemed to substantiate the claim that she and two men, two reporters. Were indeed the first ones in deliberate past the day before it was liberated, right? So they were shot at by Nazi snipers. They got in the middle of partisan battles between, um, between French forces, the French partisan forces. And what was interesting about this is that. I mentioned to you the rules were for the women, you can't go pass with hospitals. Lee Carson broke that rule, as did a couple of other women. They got in trouble for it, but they continued to do that and they said, how can we tell, what's the American public, what's happening on the front lines if we're not there? You know, if somebody has to tell us first. So she did that. The, what I found was astonishing is a day or two before the liberation of Paris, as allied troops were driving towards and there, they set up on the outskirts of Paris. All the journalists were sort of in a pack. They were all put up in a hotel, you know, by the Allied, the Allied Forces. And then the night before, the Allied Forces locked up all the female correspondence in the hotel, and they said, we're doing this for your own safety. We're not gonna allow you to get into Paris until it's safe. As you can imagine, these were some strong-willed women. And Lee Carson was one of'em out front saying, what do you mean you know it not safe? We haven't been safe since we landed on Dday. We're okay with it. That's our job. But the, you are talking about a bit of rampaging, sexism. The forces said, no, no, no. We gotta protect the women. You can't go there. Lee Carson broke out

Jane: 13:29

amazing.

Jack: 13:29

She escaped from the hotel, tagged up with two other male journalists that she was friends with, and they're in a Jeep and they're the, they're by most accounts, the first ones. Paris, so that, that's one of her sort of Forest Gump locations. She and Ernest Hemingway. This is really funny'cause you know, I keep relating these stories to my wife when I'm finding them. And at one point in time my wife said, you know, I can't believe that she didn't run into Hemingway at some point in time. And plus she was gorgeous. So if you run into Hemingway and you're a gorgeous woman, he's gonna hit on you.

Jane: 14:01

Absolutely.

Jack: 14:02

Literally, the next day I find the story. Written by, one of her friends talking about how she and Hemingway and a couple of other journalists were almost captured by the Nazis in a farmhouse that they were staying in on the way into Paris. You know, I I, that's a story. That's true. I had Herm Hemingway hitting on her, not surprisingly, there, you know, that part I added to it. She was with the American troops when they crossed the rhyme. That was a huge deal in, in the drive towards Berlin. Because now allied troops were in the heartland of Germany and it was a battle to get over. They couldn't find a bridge. People might have heard if you're if you've, you know, read up on World War ii, you might know about the bridge at Remagen. Which is the bridge that was utilized by allied troops. They thought they were gonna have to build a bridge because they believed that all the bridges had been destroyed either by allied bombing or by the German retreating Germans. And she was there with American troops when they quite literally stumbled on the bridge at Ramad. They come over a hill and they look down and they say it's still standing. But they had to take it, So she's there in, you know, in the battle lines of taking the Bridget Raman run. She was there and actually got arrested when the allied troops met up with the Soviet troops. And this was marking the end for Germany when they met up together. And they met up. You know, she was part of, of the, there were festivities, like banquets, and, and they talked about all the Russians and throwing down the vodka shots. She and another reporter decided. We gotta try to get to Berlin by ourselves. So they, they actually borrow the term, they used what had been a Nazi staff car that had been repainted with allied paintings and a, a flag. And they're, two of them are driving, trying to get through to, to Berlin. And they've got fighting Russians forces, the retreating German forces on either side of them. And they actually had to get saved by Russian forces and they arrested them because they were thinking. These are the frontline troops and they're saying, here's somebody in a car that looks like a Nazi staff car. They're swearing to us that they're American reporters, we're not so sure. So once again, she finds herself being arrested, trying to get into Berlin. So you know, all of these significant events, she was, was there and was there as a force.

Jane: 16:29

Yeah. And it's like, like you said, stranger than fiction. Like, so gut, so gutsy, so brave. There was a scene I enjoyed at the be towards the beginning of the book that I wanted to ask if it was true or not. Where she has an encounter with Winston Churchill. Was that

Jack: 16:44

Yeah, fictionalized? That was, yeah. That one was something that I created, but it was based on the fact that Winston Churchill embraced the media. He understood the power of me. Winston Churchill was a writer, if you remember, you know, during the Bo War, he was covering the Bo War and was captured, and it was the basis for his own books, movies, afterwards, where he escaped from a prisoner of war camp and, and had to travel across, um, South Africa to to, to be liberated himself. So Churchill embraced the media and was willing to say yes to female reporters. There. So you know it, I found in some of her writings and some of the writings of others that they viewed Churchill as an ally. Somebody who would, who would get them out there?'cause in, interestingly, in the Pacific Theater, general Douglas MacArthur would allow no women to report.

Jane (2): 17:37

Mm-hmm.

Jack: 17:37

No women whatsoever were allowed in Pacific Theater. So Churchill actually came out and said A number of edicts, yes, we need reporters on the front lines. And yes, it's fine for us to have female reporters if they're good to do their job. I don't care whether they're male or female. So I took that and took a little bit of literary license and created what I think could have happened. Absolute, absolutely. And what would've sounded like and looked like if she indeed had encountered Winston Churchill. But I'm glad you liked the scene was one of my favorite ones.

Jane: 18:11

Yeah. And that's, um, I think that's what's so great about historical fiction. You know, I always say like, if it didn't happen, is it authentic to the time and the place and the history? You know, like, then, then, you know, put it in to, to create a better narrative. So if it didn't happen.

Jack: 18:25

Might it have?

Jane: 18:26

Yes, exactly.

Jack: 18:28

And does it sound and feel consistent with the reality of history? Yeah,

Jane: 18:32

totally. I wanna ask about the structure because this is a dual timeline. Narrative and it starts actually in the post four years, in the 1950s when she's living in dc. Um, and then she's kind of recounting her life. During the war. Um, but you said that you took more license, you fictionalized her life post-war more than you did, you know, during her, her World War II accounts. So talk her life during World War ii. So talk about, um, why you decided to reimagine her life after the war in this way.

Jack: 19:03

This was an interesting development because originally I was writing it, just focusing on her time in World War. And I as I got it to, to my publisher and my editor and we were sitting and talking and one of them had an idea and said, you know, we know that, you know her post work career was not what she wanted, would've wanted it to be. She was a woman at the, in the backend of World War ii. And as we know, you know, women stepped up in World War ii. Historians will tell you, we could not have been successful in winning that war without the efforts of women across the board.

Jane (2): 19:39

Mm-hmm.

Jack: 19:40

But historians will also tell you, when the war was over and the men came back, they got most of the big jobs, you know? Mm-hmm. And, you know, we've heard various stories about women who were so successful, and all of a sudden they're told, you know, we don't need you anymore. So she comes back and, and she's not getting the big stories. Anymore. You know, she's still writing, but you know, she's doing profiles and, and things. And this is a woman who was in Foxholes mm-hmm. Under artillery bombardment. So, you know, one of the folks in my publisher said what do we think it might have been? If she had gotten the opportunity to do more when she went back? And so I started giving it some thought and I thought, she's back and the Cold War is now raging. She's back in DC an epicenter of the Cold War, and again, I, you know, I had studied some of this and I know you've got, you know, some stuff on the Cold War that you've written about, and I thought Cold War in DC. Espionage, right? And then I, I used some actual characters. I changed some names, but some folks who, who were revealed to have been involved in espionage in DC during the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, there was a woman called, woman called the, the, the Red Spy Queen.

Jane (2): 20:54

Mm-hmm.

Jack: 20:54

And I've taken her and given her a little bit of a different identity here, but I have her reaching out. Lee Carson, who's now back, in, in the fifties in DC and saying to her, I have information about a very high up espionage rate. Meet me here if you want to know, at the Washington Monument. Mm-hmm. And so it, it, we decided, I decided I'm gonna bracket this. I'm gonna start with the Cold War part of this, and she gets thrown into this investigation. And the investigation. You know, we, we know, again, if you've studied the Cold War, you've heard the expression about the Cambridge five and these were people who were students at Cambridge in the twenties and the thirties when communism was viewed very differently from the way it was viewed in the Cold War. You know, I, I teach an undergraduate seminar at Yale, 18 years now about famous trials, and we do the Rosenberg trial. And I, I say to my students, I said, you know, if you were students here at Yale in the 1930s. There was a Yale Young Communist Club organization, colleges, universities around the country, especially coming outta the depression. People were saying, is there a better socioeconomic system for us than capitalism that could take care of everybody? So there was an attraction to communism in the twenties and thirties and idealism, which we learned afterwards, just didn't exist in, in, in practice, in communist societies. But. You know anything about Cambridge five, they were five illustrious Cambridge students who went on to important positions in the British government. And for decades they were Soviet spies. Um, some of'em were captured, some of'em just escaped. And I thought maybe, how about if there's a, a Cambridge six? How about if we have somebody else, but he's in the American? System, diplomatic system. So that was the foundation for saying, let's thrust her into, with all of her wartime skills and curiosity and fearlessness, let's thrust her into this espionage investigation to start the book. And then it shifts in storytelling as she's telling, somebody's asking her about what she did. It shifts then to the middle portion of the book a little bit. The bulk of it, it takes us back to her. Wartime exploits, and then it comes out of that and wraps up with it, this espionage ring and, and what happens? It's an imagining by me as opposed to the bulk of the book, which was World War ii, which is all based upon actual events. It's an imagining, but once again, it's, it's, you know, I felt like I knew her.

Jane (2): 23:27

Mm-hmm.

Jack: 23:28

And that's what you want, you know, as a writer, you wanna really feel like these characters you're creating that, that they're part of, you know them. Mm-hmm. You know, what they think and what they act and what they say. And so. You know, I felt this would've been her if she was given the opportunity here. Yes. So let's kind of, let's kind of bracket the World War II stories with what might have been for her for journalism career.

Jane: 23:52

No, I thought I, I loved that twist and it, but it was interesting when I, when I first read the summary of the book and it said a re-imagining of her life after the war, during the early Cold War years. I, I was thinking like a complete re-imagining, but a lot of like the history. Those early Cold War years is, is based in fact, like Elizabeth Bentley, who she connect, Lee Connects with

Jack: 24:15

Elizabeth. Elizabeth Benley, the character that I, yeah. So as an American, different

Jane: 24:20

American who was a Russian spy, you know? So yeah, I would just, in this world for my next book, early Cold War, dc so I was like, oh, we should do an event if you ever come up here this way. That's right.

Jack: 24:31

We'll do that. We'll do that. Love to.

Jane: 24:33

Yeah, it was a fascinating time in US history and I think it's one I think people enjoy learning about, um, the Early Cold War years in America.'cause there was a lot going on that I, I think people are forgotten about.

Jack: 24:45

So people and perhaps especially young people. Yeah. I'll say to my students, my Yale students are, you know, 22 years old, 21, 22 years old. I grew up as a child in the Cold War and I'll say to them, you all don't understand. You know, the, the fear, the anxiety of living in that area and era of mutually assured destruction, mad. The notion that if somebody fires up a news, weapons, somebody else is gonna retaliate and the world will disappear. I say to them, you all as students have had fire drills, right? In grammar school where the alarm goes off and you go outside in the parking lot until another alarm goes off and you go back into the school. I said we had nuclear bomb drills. I remember in third grade the alarm goes up and we're hiding under our desks. I'm in Jersey City, New Jersey in third grade and I say to them, I recall even then asking myself a couple questions. Why? Why do the Russians wanna bomb Jersey City? First and secondly, is this quarter inch of plywood over my head really gonna protect me if the Russian are in fact bombing jersey, say. So it was, you know, the, the fear and the anxiety at the time was palpable. We lived under it, you know, people, rational people who built survival places in their basements and stop them for years. So it, it's a time that. Sort of academically people now can look back at, but if you live through it, you realize how powerful and compelling and frightening that time was to make all of this. Then realistic when you try to tell this story.

Jane: 26:13

Yeah. Yeah. So I love that you bring in like both timelines, in both parts of history. I think people will really enjoy that. I have a question. Explain the origins, I know what they are, but, um, of the title beyond, uh, um, beyond this place of Wrath and Tears to people. Uh, and I you came up with that, or your publisher, or, it was kind of,

Jack: 26:31

I actually, I, I'm gonna take credit for that. The working title was called The Rade. Because it's one of the titles, if you would, that she got, she was called the D-Day Dame for flying over. She became a, a, a celebrity. You know, I found these articles in Time Magazine written about her during the war. She would repeatedly be mentioned in Walter Winchell's radio uh, broadcast, which Walter Winchell was like the consummate. Here the kind of Hollywood entertainment, if Walter Winchell mentioned you, you were up in stratosphere. So she became a bit of a celebrity. So I was, we were using the Rh Maiden as a working title, and we were getting close and, and somebody said, well, if somebody doesn't know the story, are, are they gonna think this is about a, a German woman? Because the Ryan Ryan Maiden comes from a Wagner opera. Yeah, the characters in Wagner Opera. So then we started working through it. And I don't know about you, but I found some of the hardest things to do about writing novels is coming up with the right title.

Jane: 27:31

Oh, so hard, right? Isn't it? It's so hard.

Jack: 27:34

That, and coming up with the names of characters. Mm-hmm. You know, to make it sound right. So we kicked through a bunch of different ones and nobody was sold on any of them. You know, somebody say, I got a great one, and I'd say or I suggest another one, and they would say, So finally, my, my editor who did a wonderful job, Elizabeth Trout and again, the people at Kensington, I have been just delighted. This is my second book with them. And they, they've just been, they're smart, they're thoughtful, they're supportive. Mm-hmm. They do everything you want a publisher to do. And so someone had said, I think it was Elizabeth said, can we find something a little bit more poetic? We talked about, you know, all the light we cannot see, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Poetic title. And I said, all right, gimme some time. Lemme see what I can do with that. So I started jumping into, into world War I, world War II poetry, you know, there was a great deal of poetry that came out of World War I.

Jane (2): 28:26

Mm-hmm. You know,

Jack: 28:27

some very famous writers, some of whom died in World War I wasn't finding anything great and just was just. Weaving through things to find something, and I came across the poem Invictus. People may well be familiar with the Invictus Games. Uh, prince Harry's been involved with them and they are, are sporting events for warriors, most of them wounded warriors. And I find the Invictus poem and it was written in the 1850s in Britain and it was all about this notion of how do we get over the hurdles and the fears and the dangers of our life and became apparently something that, that. Was, part of the curriculum for British school kids, Invictus. You had to, you had to read and you know, people might remember, you know, the last lines talking about, you know, the, the master of my faith, the captain of my soul, type of thing. But in the middle of it, I find a paragraph that reads, you know, beyond this place of wrath in tears, and it talks about how we need to get past the shadows so that we can survive.

29:30

Mm-hmm. And I

Jack: 29:31

thought, wow, that's it.

29:34

That,

Jack: 29:34

that that's it. Because, Lee Carson felt that the death and the destruction and the loss of young lives and, you know, the destruct, the physical destruction she would see of villages and cities. And she felt that, and you could see it in her writings. And my thought was, okay, she's lived through all this, as with the soldiers, you know, my, i, I dedicate this book to my father-in-law, Neil Kelly, who landed in the third wave of D-Day. Wow. Got into a couple of weeks into it and then was seriously wounded in the Battle of Sand Low lost part of his hand, you know, was in a hospital for almost a year afterwards, but and he never talked about it? No. And those members of the greatest generation, you know, my colleague Tom Broka, when I was at NBC News, did the book, the Greatest Generation. And one of the people he wrote about it I knew was from my hometown. And the interesting thing is, I, I didn't know that this man, who I knew very well had, had led the charge on the D-Day landings at Ponta ha, which was the cliff overlooking where everybody said, if we don't take out the guns there, this invasion is doomed to failure. And this guy was the one who went up the cliffs and took them. I never knew it. You know, that generation didn't talk about it at all. So, and, but I but they, they struggled with it. Yeah. And, and I thought, I am sure that Lee Carson struggled with what she saw and the dead bodies and the smoking remains of this concentration camp with the body strewn all about that she and these people actually discovered. And I thought, how do you get through that? That's when I thought, you know what? You need to get beyond this place of wrath in tears. Mm-hmm. So I sent it out to, to my publishers. I said, guys, I think I've got it. And so we scheduled a Zoom meeting like this and I thought to myself, what do I do if they don't like it? Because you don't what I'm sold on it now. And publishing is a collaborative effort, and you work and and I'm thinking, I wonder if I'm gonna have, do I have to dig in my heels on this? How am I gonna handle this? And I was so delighted we all got on the screen and I said, what do you think Everybody's like, yes. Oh, great. So it took a long time to find it, but, but I'm glad you like it. And I, I think it really captures what we're talking about here.

Jane: 31:48

Yeah. And it's memorable, which I think is the most important thing for title, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Jack: 31:53

Um, I have

Jane: 31:54

a few writing questions. I don't wanna take up too much more of your time. It's already seven 30, almost 7 35. Um, I'm

Jack: 31:59

having a great time with this conversation. Thank you. I know we can just

Jane: 32:02

chat and chat. We could, you can just chat.

Jack: 32:04

You just tell me what time you need and I'm happy to do it.

Jane: 32:06

Okay. So I have some writing questions that if you've listened, I ask all the writers that come on here, and then anyone in the audience has questions, please put them in the chat or the q and a for Jack. So I love to ask about. Writing process, writing.'cause it's so different for every writer. So are you a plotter? Do you plot things out or do you write by the seat of your pants? Are you somewhere in between?

Jack: 32:28

No I'm somewhere in between. I have as if it's a map, I have destination points.

32:33

Yeah. I, I

Jack: 32:34

wanna get here, I wanna get there. Mm-hmm. And then I sit down, I start to write and I say, let's get to, how am I gonna get to that point? Mm-hmm. So I've got some friends who are writers who have detailed, detailed outlines. I don't. You know, when I found, sometimes I think I'm getting from point A to point B, and then I realize, no, that's not where I wanna go. This is not where this has taken me. I gotta sell to another point first before I can get there. So that's the way I write. I've got destinations, I've got thoughts in my mind, and then I work through it. I don't know if, if you've probably, I know you've done this too. You know, the question for a lot of writers is when do you write best? You know, how do you write best? I have the writer, John Grisham is a good friend of mine. I interviewed him. I used to host the Today Show on the weekends back in the late nineties when he was just coming out. So I had had him on the, on the station. We came friends, we both had similar backgrounds. We were both practicing lawyers. I got into journalism, he got into writing and I remember talking with him about it and he said, you know what? You gotta find out what time of the day you write best. John said he gets up in the morning, six o'clock, he writes from six to 12

33:38

mm-hmm. Every day,

Jack: 33:39

and then takes the rest of the day off. He writes, he will do a book. He'll turn our book in six months and he'll take six months off and do it after. I mean, that's, I mean, it's his full-time occupation. I'm, I'm still working as a journalist, you know, so that's not what I was doing. But I discovered I write better in the afternoons. In the mornings I've got things I wanna do and get outta the way, and then I'd find, okay. Now I'm ready to, to sit down. I have room at the fireplace. We close the doors and you know, I'll work from, you know, two o'clock to, it might be six o'clock or so. And I, again, one of the problems is because, still being a working journalist's, not as much now as I used to, obviously as I'm, as my career sort of winding down, but there were times when I'd have to walk away from it and I might be away from it for a week. I'd be traveling, doing something else, and I'd always take a notebook with me. And you know, I had a combination of working on my computer and I have a ton of legal pads that I would fill out, handwritten, I'd be on a plane or in a hotel or something and I'd said, oh, I got an idea. And I'd start filling pages and pages. I probably have 20 legal pads, you know, in the big binder for the book where I filled out every page in writing in addition to this. And I also found that it was a good editing process for me. Because then I'd sit down with the legal pages and I start to sort of, transpose them on the computer and I'd say, now I gotta change this. Now we're gonna do this. So again, for me, you know, I'm not the early morning crank out, you know, a bunch of hours right away. Right. Better in the afternoon. You know, just found a good spot. Somebody had said to me, find the right spot. So in the cold weather, this room, I put a fire in the fireplace. You know, we live about a block from the ocean on the Atlantic Coast in New Jersey. The old a hundred year old house and I found a spot on the porch, you know, rockers, and I'd sit there and I'd do some writing there. So it, it's kind of the way it evolved for me as a writer.

Jane: 35:22

Nice. Excellent. What is your favorite part of the writing process, and what is the part you like the least?

Jack: 35:31

Really good questions. I think, I do a lot of editing while I'm writing. Other writers have different approaches. You know, some of they'll just write everything and then start editing. But I literally go back chapter by chapter and do editing as I go. And it's the joy of when, when I go back to a chapter and I'd look at it and I'd say, all right, this is pretty good, but I can make it better. And I do some things with it. And then I'd sit back and say, that's it. I've got that chapter, so it, it's, you know, since I do sort of editing on the fly in the middle of it for me, being able to sit back and say, good, that one's done. Let's move on to the next one. I think the, the editing that I do with my editors and, you know, look, I, I'm a collaborative journalist, you know, I did stories for 60 Minutes you know, for many years in 60 Minutes sports and, 60 Minutes most collaborative. In involvement I've ever had, we would do for a 60 minute story. And if you watch it, you know this, you can see the quality of it. Oh yeah. 15, 20 minute story long form for television. We would have, I think the last story I did, we had 13 different scripts, revisions of scripts for this. Wow. And we did four different screenings of it. And after each screening, you do screening in 60 minutes, you've got a room full of people. So it's me, it's, it's my producer, it's the editor, and then it's sort of the higher ups and then other editors and producers.'cause we want impact from people who are not working on the story, you know? And, and after the screening you get all these ideas and you had to be thick skinned and say, this is all about making the story better. And it was, and it's the same thing about it, the editing process. It's, what a great editor does as you know. And I remember somebody telling me, a writer saying, look, I don't want an editor who's trying to make this their story. If the editor wants this story, go write your own book. Mm-hmm. I want an editor who's gonna take my story and make it better. So the editing is invaluable, but when it comes back to me and it's like, okay, we got it all marked up and all these things, and you know, now on the computer you got all the red lines and this, and you type in things. And, um, so I'm past the creative process and now involved with, all right. Does this word work really work here? Mm-hmm. Do you need to cut this down a little bit? Does this scene, can we do something with this? And I recognize it's essential. You know, it, good editing is essential to good writing,

38:05

but

Jack: 38:06

it's a little bit burdensome. I, I don't know if you share it with me or not, but that's, it's, it's kind of the way I look at, which is why, you know, I've been blessed with marvelous editors and again, the people I work with at Kensington. You know, it's the right thing to do and they're good at it, you know, but it, it can be a little bit burdensome.

Jane: 38:23

Oh yeah. I, I agree. I mean, I, my editors, I've been really lucky and they're rarely wrong, but when I first get those editorial notes, Zach, I always say, I run screaming from the room. Right. I just need a

Jack: 38:34

day to let them. Yes, you do. I did the same day. It's like, wait, isn't this good? Aren't we saying this is okay? What we, how did this be good? I've got so many notes here to do it. Yeah. And then realize what you realize is, is because it is good, but we'll make it better.

Jane: 38:48

Exactly. Exactly.

Jack: 38:50

Yeah.

Jane: 38:50

Just a couple more questions. What advice, this is a two part question. Can you give aspiring writers about get, about the writing process? About writing in general and what can you give them advice about getting published? What advice you give them about,

Jack: 39:03

so starting with the writing process and, and I'll go back to an interest story, and again, it comes back to John Risman. I don't wanna sound like a name dropper, you know, but, oh, you know, he happens to be a friend, so and so, for literally for years after I first met him, we would talk and, and I'd say, you know what, John, I, you know, I got an idea, for a book and stuff that wanna do, and he, and whenever we bump into each other, he says, how's it coming? I said, oh, I haven't gotten started yet. And again. I'm working full-time as journalist. I'm jumping, you know, I'm the chief legal correspond for NBC News, so I'm jumping on planes to cover stories all over the country, Uhhuh and doing other, in other jobs over the years. And so the first good advice he gave to me was, Jack, I'm telling you this as a friend, stop talking about it and start writing. Oh, so good, right? Isn't it? Because you know, everybody's thinking about, I've got an idea, let's do this. He said Start, start writing. Figure it out, see how it goes. He had other advice. When you talk about your writing, he had a great, and he said he got this from, I don't, maybe it was Hemingway saying, don't finish. If you can help it at the end of a chapter and walk away from your computer or writing, he said, because then you gotta come back. He said, especially with you.'cause I'd be away from it for days, maybe weeks. Mm-hmm. I said, finish like two thirds of the way through. So when you come back to it, you know how you're gonna finish this. So you can pick up the flow. And then Carrie, you into the next one. Yeah. Which, which was helpful, you know, but in terms of what you write about, you know, sometimes you hear people say, oh, you gotta write about what you know, and, and that's a great idea. But I think you also might wanna write about what you want to know. Mm-hmm. You know, and again, you have the same attraction to World War II and your writings that I have. Well, we didn't live through that, so we don't, we don't know it in that sense, but we're curious about it. And we're propelled by that curiosity. So I, I think the key to writing is your curiosity.

Jane (2): 40:51

Mm-hmm.

Jack: 40:52

And let you know, find what you're curious about, and then let that curiosity lead you to some answers to learn about it, and then you can write about it. So be guided and driven by your curiosity. Getting published is hard. So it's a, you know, in, in, in this world, in this realm. So this is my fourth novel. Um, the first one I, I did and I liked it. It was good. And I look back on it now and said it was good. You get better. But then as with anything else, as more you write better, you get, and I did a, you know, one of the self-publishing companies, reputable. Met with them, talked with them. You know, I had a bit of an advantage because I was a national television journalist.

Jane (2): 41:38

Mm-hmm. So

Jack: 41:38

I could get myself on the Today Show. Mm-hmm. You know, to talk about my book.'cause I used to host the Today Show. Mm-hmm. You know, I had friends that were still doing it, you know, but the first one's a struggle, you know? Mm-hmm. And but you don't wanna give up. And again, and not to be namedropping, John Grisham will tell the story about his first book. Which I think may well have been his best. Right? Oh, is this the time to kill? Time to Kill One? My favorite isn't, it's just a folks who are listening to us, if you haven't read this, please go read it. It's a fabulous book. He could not get it published, couldn't get it published, self-published it, put it in in cartons in the trunk of his car, and drive around. Go around the state of Mississippi. Mm-hmm. Where he was practicing a lawyer and would go to book fairs and things and sell it out of the trunk of his car. He couldn't get an agent, couldn't get a publisher. And then after that, got out there and again, yeah, some people read it, others didn't. He found somebody who was willing to work as an agent, and that person said, all right we got this book, time to Kill. We use it as a writing sample. You have another story. And he said, yeah, I do. And the other story was the firm, which we know, runaway bestseller, you know? Mm-hmm. Unbelievable successful movie. So he, he had to keep after it to do it. Interestingly, then publishers came back and said, yeah, we're gonna take that time to kill and we're gonna reissue that, you know, and, and give it, you know, the, the market publicity it needs. Yeah. But there's a guy, one of the most successful writing careers ever couldn't get published. Yeah. But what you say is, if you think it's worthwhile and if it's fulfilling. You keep after, and you know what you do? You, you just get online, you find all of the agents out there hard to do without an agent. Mm-hmm. You find all the agents out there and some of them will advertise looking for new writers. And then you just, you basically say, any one of them here, I got this here, we read this here, I'd love to talk to you about this. You get it out there and, and you don't give up and you see, and if you have to do that second time, if you think it's worthwhile, if you think what you have is good. Then you do that. Ultimately, I got to, to Kensington, my publisher for my last two books and you know, they've been, the, the, the last one was called Chariot on the Mountain. Again, a similar story that I found True Life story about a, a woman in Virginia who had an enslaved woman who actually found her freedom in a courthouse in Virginia in 1846. And I remember saying, I had never heard about that. That became the, the basis of that story. But, you know, I was fortunate to find a publisher who believed in what I did. They're great people, they're really smart. They know their job and mm-hmm. And they get really invested in it. So the advice I give to people, and I'll speak at journalism schools, I don't talk about intelligent news journalism, and then I'll talk about, about writing and I'll say to them the key is you have to have a degree of perseverance and a willingness to believe in yourself. And if it's good enough, somebody's gonna find it for you. Yes. But you gotta keep, used to be throwing things over the transom. That's an expression they still use in publishing, right? Because people would find the office of a publisher and they had this old glass transoms over the door, and they'd be open and people would go by and just throw it over their manuscript and hope somebody would look at it on the flu and read it. The, the today version of throwing a manuscript over the transom is, you know, you find an, an agent or a publishing company, and you get it to them, and then you believe in what you do.

Jane: 45:10

Absolutely. Such, such good advice. Um, before we wrap up, tell people where you're gonna be touring in the next few months.'cause there's people from all over the country on tonight, so Lovely. Um, so tell, where are you gonna be?

Jack: 45:23

Yep. So, so the next few weeks you're gonna get book came out last Wednesday. And, you know, I was, I mentioned to you, I, I, I had a new shoulder put in literally three weeks ago today, so I took the sling off for this and, but recovering it takes a while, but it's okay. So we, we weren't doing anything, a whole lot of things right away, but in the next couple of weeks I'm doing a number of appearances. I love to go to bookstores, you know, because I love to go to bookstore.

Jane (2): 45:46

Mm-hmm. You know, I'm

Jack: 45:47

one of these guys that'll walk in and hang out and read some things and I'll always walk out with an arm flow books no matter where I am. I might be in London doing something. I'm gonna be in London Books. I'm walking out with their books afterwards. So we've got a few that we're doing here locally on the Jersey Shore where I live, so, uh, with Barnes and Noble in Monmouth Mall, in Eatontown, New Jersey on this coming Saturday, the sixth on the ninth. We have a marvelous bookstore. My, the town I live in is called Spring Lake. It's a small town, 3000 people, uh, right on the ocean and a little street, little kind of main street. And it's Alwayss written up as this lovely pictures town. And we have a fairly new bookstore there called Thunder Books, and they've been wonderful. They have just built out, they moved into new space. The community has been supportive. Uh, Monday night on the ninth, I'm there. Um, in Spring Lake in July, July 13th. The neighboring town is called Brielle and the Brielle Library, public Library. It is hosting. We're gonna do a conversation with myself and one of my good friends who's in the media also about that. We've got a number of things that are being set up. As a matter of fact, I've communicated with with the person who runs all of the marketing publicity at, at Kensington and, and just as. Fabulous job and we're setting up things. So we'll do a, you know, trip to Philadelphia, uh, dc couple of great stops in Delaware, like Rehoboth Beach and some other thing. Right? You know, this'll be like July and August. Um, I'm gonna try and get up in your area around the Boston area. I'm hoping to, we're, we're looking to set up something hopefully at Smith College where as I said, Lee Carson was enrolled as a 14-year-old.

Jane (2): 47:20

Mm-hmm.

Jack: 47:21

And I thought, you know, Smith College, you know, originally one of the seven sister schools mm-hmm. That were all women. Still one of the handful of all women schools. And, and my hope is I said, let's talk about somebody who came from your environ. And let's hear mm-hmm. Let your students today hear about Groundbreakers. Um, so we're looking for a couple of those places. You know, up in Hanover, New Hampshire. There's a great true north, I think it's called bookstore up there, um, that we're looking to talk to. So the whole Ben bunch of them we're looking to, so any of you out there have fun bookstores and like me to come, let us know and let to do it.

Jane: 47:53

Excellent. Excellent. Well, thank you. I, I'm sorry to take up so much of your time. We could get, I think, and this was a delight,

Jack: 47:59

this chatting for another hour. No, you and I could have gone forever. This was, uh, so fun. This was a delightful And you know why it was delightful? Because it, it wasn't an interview. It was a conversation Yes. That you and I had, which, which makes it so enjoyable, I think.

Jane: 48:13

Well, hopefully we'll get to meet in person sometime. Thank you. I wish you forward you all the best. Again, it is beyond this place of wrath and tears. And, um, and that's a wrap. So next up on Thursday night, I have my friend Camille de Mayo with her, I think it's her eighth novel. Come Fly With Me, which just came out and, um, you can read stretching healy.com. Thank you so much. My mom says this was the best ever. So,

Jack: 48:37

ah, well if it comes from your mom, then I deeply appreciate that because moms know.

Jane: 48:41

Moms. All right. Have a great night and best of luck, Jack. Thank you so much.

Jack: 48:46

Thanks again, Jane. You be well.

Jane: 48:47

Take care. Bye-bye.