Interview: Alice Kay Hill Author of UNDER A FULL MOON: THE LAST LYNCHING IN KANSAS @akhillauthor #Interview
Alice Kay Hill is passionate about her Kansas heritage. She has published in Hobby Farms magazine and written an instruction manual title GROW TOPLESS: A Modified High Tunnel Design for Headache Free Extended-Season Gardening which is available on Amazon. UNDER A FULL MOON: The Last Lynching in Kansas is her first narrative non-fiction work.
WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: https://www.akhillauthor.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AKHillauthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/realhistorynow/
Welcome to The Writer's Life! Now that your book has been published, we’d love to find out more about the process. Can we begin by having you take us at the beginning? When did you come up with the idea to write your book?
The restoration of the 1907 Shirley Opera House, Atwood, KS was the stimulus for writing Under A Full Moon: The Last Lynching in Kansas. While doing research for application to the Kansas State Historical Society for its placement on the register of historic places I came across a reference to the Owl Café which was a business within this building in the 1930s. This triggered a memory of a local crime story I had been told as a child by my grandmother – that of the lynching of a man for the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl. Her tale was a cautionary one, ensuring my sisters and I knew not to get into a car with a stranger. How did this story, the Owl Café and the Opera House connect? This was the place Dorothy Eileen Hunter was last seen alive, eating a late breakfast with her kidnapper, just shortly before her death. I felt compelled to learn more, knowing that I was sharing the same space within the Opera House that they had. The idea to write a book caught fire.
Who is your publisher and how did you find them or did you self-publish?
WildBlue Press, Denver, CO is the publisher of Under A Full Moon. I had submitted the manuscript to other publishing houses and received rejection letters, but along with the rejection notices came encouragement to continue searching for the right fit. Noting that True Crime is a popular entertainment today and recognizing that this story was a historic true crime event I did an internet search for publishing houses that specialized in that genre. That led to this publishing relationship. I am happy with the results!
Is there anything that surprised you about getting your first book published?
Perhaps the most surprising facet was the ease with which WildBlue Press led me through the process. I believed this would be much more cumbersome than it was.
Do you believe a book cover plays an important role in the selling process?
I do. As a reader, I recognize that the cover gives clues as to the style and purpose of a book. Romance novels are easily identified, for example. WildBlue Press used a photograph that had been taken on one of my research trips to the area of eastern Colorado where the first crime took place. The image conveys the stark realism of an abandoned sod home, a skeletal tree, and a full moon behind a lynching rope. I was given a few proofs to review and asked for my input to determine what felt right to me. WildBlue Press used my comments and the result is powerful!
How hard was it to write a book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make the journey easier for other writers?
This book took nearly sixteen years to write because of our complicated lives running a farm/ranch, a hunting lodge, a restaurant, having town jobs, and family obligations. I never quit thinking about the story, though. Every opportunity that became available was spent continuing the research, taking notes, compiling files. It was not until we had sold our farm and moved to Arkansas in 2015 that I was able to devote myself to its completion. After a further delay during my husband’s battle with cancer, it was done in the spring of 2019. I would advise other writers not to give up.
What other books are you working on and when will they be published?
I have another book, self-published, which is an instructional manual called Grow Topless: A Modified High Tunnel Design for Headache Free Extended-Season Gardening based on years of growing food for our hunting lodge and restaurant. Books in the works are a ghost story of possession and a fictionalized account of my life as a farmwife.
What’s one fact about your book that would surprise people?
Long before this book got its start my husband and I were Family Teachers for an organization that provided community-based services to developmentally delayed adults. One of the men who shared the home we worked in was the grandson of the arresting sheriff when Richard Read was captured. He was named for his grandfather, Edward McGinley. He had been placed in a mental institution at a young age and not released until he was an adult. As I wrote the book and recognized the relationship I felt a strong tie to the McGinley family.
Finally, what message are you trying to get across with your book?
My hope is that the reader will be compelled to act, to speak up, and to defend children who are being victimized either by a family member, society, or a stranger. The overall theme of this book is that monsters of often ‘made’ by the treatment they receive as children. I feel intervention, rather than turning our backs to those victims, could have profound, long term effects.
Additionally, there are opportunities, as when Richard Read took Dorothy Hunter into a public space just prior to her death, that if ignored lead to devastating outcomes. I can’t help but believe that at least one person turned to his/her friend that morning in April 1932 and said, “Look at that little girl. I think something is wrong.” And the friend says, as many often do, “Don’t get involved. It’s not our business.”
I hope readers will see it is our business!
Thank you again for this interview! Do you have any final words?
I made great effort to tell this story as accurately and as truthfully as possible. It is a creative, narrative non-fiction account. The events described are research based. Family stories came from documents, interviews, and newspaper social columns which revealed details of community members.
There are many versions and conflicting stories in the accounts of the abduction and death of Dorothy Hunter and the mob lynching of Richard Read, but I tried to clear the sensationalism from the facts, to use common sense and a personal knowledge of the area to write a clean telling.
Rather than working from a preconceived theory, I let the people tell their stories. I hope I gave them justice.
UNDER A FULL MOON: The Last Lynching in Kansas tells of the tragic abduction and death of an eight-year-old girl at the hands of a repeat offender in 1932. This crime stands apart as the last mob lynching in Kansas. Based on true events, this account takes a deep dive into the psycho-social complexities of pioneer times and their impact on this particular crime and the justice meted out to the perpetrator.
Beginning in the year 1881, and written in a chronological narrative non-fiction format, author Alice Kay Hill vividly weaves the stories of the victims and the families involved. She reveals how mental and physical abuse, social isolation, privations of homesteading, strong dreams and even stronger personalities all factored into the criminal and his crimes.
Spanning the years of settlement to the beginnings of the Dust Bowl, historic events are lived as daily news by the seven families whose lives become intertwined. Historically accurate and written with an intimate knowledge of the area, UNDER A FULL MOON is as personal as a family diary, as vivid as a photo album found in an attic trunk, and will remain with the reader long after the book is closed.
ORDER YOUR COPY
Amazon → https://amzn.to/3kI18XG
Barnes & Noble → https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/under-a-full-moon-alice-kay-hill/1137286542?ean=9781952225192
WildBlue Press → https://wildbluepress.com/under-a-full-moon-alice-k-hill-true-crime/
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