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- [00:00]
Tracy Thomas
Hey, y', all, it's me back with another book to tell you about. If you love contemporary retellings of classic novels like James by Percival Everett, then let me tell you about your next favorite book. It's called the Great man, and it is a retelling of the Great Gatsby, but it is set among the black upper class of post war Los Angeles and is inspired by real life historic events. It follows Charlie Tramiel, a young veteran who is lured by his cousin Marguerite to the esteemed West Adams Heights, Louisiana's newly rechristened Sugar Hill, a place for black elites. As Charlie navigates a landscape rife with ambition, betrayal, and societal turmoil, he soon finds himself beside the dazzling James Reaper man, facing a pivotal decision that could end in tragedy. Whether you've read or not read the Great Gatsby, you're gonna like the Great Man. The Great man is out now. It is by Kira Davis Lurie, and you can find it wherever books are sold.
- [01:08]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Over the course of the project, I was lucky to benefit from advice from authors that I really admire. And one person who was generous with their time was Patrick Raden Keefe. And I remember having a conversation with him about how I could have researched this book until the end of my life. Like I could have lived to be Rosa Royce and Blitz years old and still be researching. You know, it was a comforting process for me, it was an exciting process for me, but I also had to know when to stop and when to start writing. And I think it was helpful to talk to Patrick about that because he was like, yes, I think that that's true for all narrative nonfiction writers. You have to. You have to just start writing at some point.
- [01:54]
Tracy Thomas
Welcome to the Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I'm your host, Tracy Thomas, and today I am joined by journalist and debut author Haley Cohen Gilliland to discuss her new book, A Flower Traveled in My Blood, the incredible true story of the grandmothers who fought to find a stolen generation of children. This book tells the story of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, a group of grandmothers who challenged the Argentinian government to find their missing children and grandchildren who were stolen by the Argentine armed forces in the late 70s and early 80s. This book spans over 100 years of Argentine history, and Haley and I talk today about this massive feat, including how she organized herself, her notes and her research. We also talk about objectivity and ethical dilemmas that Haley faced as an author and as a human while researching this story. And we talk about why Haley wanted to structure her book around one family to tell the broader story of a nation. The Sax Book Club pick for July is God Help the Child by Toni Morrison, and we will be discussing the book on Wednesday, July 30 with Dana A. Williams. Everything we talk about on each episode of the podcast can be found in the link in the show notes. And if you love the Stacks and you want inside access to it, there are two ways to earn some extra special bonus perks. You can go to patreon.com the stacks to join the stacks pack, and you can go to Tracy thomas.substack.com to subscribe to my newsletter unstacked. Now it's time for my conversation with Haley Cohen Gilliland. Okay, everybody, I am thrilled to bring you today's author and book. I read it extremely quickly. I liked it more than I thought I was going to, even though I have already been so hyped about this book. So I am joined today by Haley Cohen Gilliland, who is the author of A Flower Traveled in My Blood, the incredible true story of the Grandmothers who Fought to Find a Stolen Generation of children. Haley, welcome to the Stacks.
- [04:05]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Thank you so much for having me, Tracy. I love this podcast, so it's an honor to be here.
- [04:09]
Tracy Thomas
Nothing makes me feel better than when people who write books I like say that they listen to the podcast. I am so easy to flatter and I am so grateful. So, that being said, let's start where we sort of always start, which is like in about 30 seconds or so. Can you tell people what your book is about?
- [04:25]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
My book is a narrative nonfiction history of the Abuelas de Plaza, who are a group of Argentine grandmothers that banded together in the 1970s at immense risk to themselves when their country was under a military dictatorship to find their grandchildren who were actually stolen from them by the military during that period.
- [04:47]
Tracy Thomas
And in a lot of cases, the way that the children grandchildren were stolen was when the parents or the children of these abuelas were abducted. The some of the women were pregnant and in some cases the children were taken with the parents. Small children were taken with the parents. So there. So they were taking kids, but they were also taking women who were pregnant and holding onto them until they had the babies and then disappearing the women fully.
- [05:17]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
That's exactly right. And it's, I mean, it's hard to pick what the most brutal thing that the Argentine military did during the dictatorship, but to me, that crime sticks out and it always has. And it's just I've I lived in Argentina for four years. I worked on this book for nearly five. And it's still hard to process. It's still hard to wrap my head around.
- [05:40]
Tracy Thomas
It's extremely upsetting stuff. I mean, the book, what's in the book is pretty upsetting. Like obviously what we just said, but just there's the whole situation. And I have to just be extremely honest. I knew basically nothing about Argentinian history. My pretty much all I knew was about the Nazis who came to Argentina after World War II, because World War II is really one of my historical sweet spots. I really, we've talked about that a lot on this podcast, but so I sort of knew that stuff. I even have never seen the musical Evita. So I knew like nothing about any of this. And what I thought was so great about your book is that it's framed through the story of one of the Abuelas, Rosa Royson Blitz, who is looking for her for information about what happened to her son, her daughter in law, and her daughter in law's unborn child. She doesn't even know if it's a boy or girl. She knows nothing. She just knows that she's very pregnant at the time of these, the disappearance. But what you've done is you framed the book through Rosa's story. And Rosa lives, is still alive. She's like 105 years old. So you give us this sort of 105-year-old history of Argentina, and I wanted to know sort of how you came to the shape of this whole thing, because it's a big thing.
- [07:02]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
It is such a big thing, and it is so much history to cover. And that's why it felt very important to me to frame this story through one family. As I mentioned, this is something, this is material that I have lived with for a long time, and at times it's really hard for me to wrap my head around it. And so I felt that for an audience who might not have a familiarity with Argentina or Argentine history to wrap their heads around it, that it would be important to ground the story as much as possible in subjects that felt on some level, relatable. And in order to feel relatable, in my opinion at least, you just have to go as deep as possible. And focusing on one family felt like a really powerful way to do that. You know, family is one of the only common denominators that unites us all. Even if you don't have a great relationship with your family, we all have a family. And so I felt that, though thankfully, most of us cannot relate to the awful events portrayed in this book. We can all relate to being part of a family. And then when it came to the Royston Butt family in particular, you know, so many of the abuelas, all of the Abuelas are incredible and each one of them deserves their own book. But I was drawn to Rosa from very early on in my research. She is just a spunky maverick of a person. Still is at 105. She's about to turn 106 in August, by the way. And you know, she was a first generation Argentine. Her parents were Eastern European Jews who fled what was then called Bessarabia, it's now modern day Moldova, in. At the turn of the 20th century, in order to escape the pogroms and settled in the Argentine papas, the farmlands, and became very successful ranchers. And from a very early age, Rosa was incredibly plucky and ambitious and driven and she wanted to have a big career and a big life. And so she took an opportunity when she was only 15 to train to be an obstetrician. And eventually that, that job brought her to Buenos Aires, where she met her husband, Benjamin, and they had their daughter, Patricia, their only daughter. And in 1978, as you alluded to before, Patricia was taken by the military as part of this much larger purge that was taking place. And Patricia had been eight months pregnant. She was about to have her second child. And so at that point, Rosa just desperately threw herself into searching for her daughter and her unborn grandchildren. And within a couple of months was connected to this larger group of women who were in the same situation, the abuelas de pas de macho. And ever since then. So this was 1978, 1979, Rosa has just been a very central part of the Abuelos movement. You know, she only stepped back from day to day activities a couple of years ago at the age of 102 and.
- [10:07]
Tracy Thomas
Same.
- [10:08]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah. And just as a character, I mean, she is so funny and so brutally honest, which for my purposes was amazing, because this is a nonfiction book. And I never had to question whether, you know, her interviews portrayed the truth because I think she's incapable of doing anything other than telling the truth. In our meeting, she slid a photo of some of the abuelas across the table kind of conspiratorially and pointed at one and she goes, she's just waiting for me to die so she could have my job. She is wearing glasses, but she doesn't really need glasses. She just thinks that they make her look pretty. And so she was very Funny. And she, you know, she mentioned the word truth 22 times in our meeting, and often it was to say some version of, I only tell the truth. I'm only capable of telling the truth, the truth before everything. And so she just jumped out to me as somebody that I wanted to spend a lot of time with, you know, both in person as much as possible, but also just spend time with her life and getting to know her.
- [11:21]
Tracy Thomas
Right. Yeah. I want to get more into the Abuelas, but before we go there, I do want to talk a little bit about the historical moment in which this happens. As I mentioned before, I knew nothing about the history. Like, I, you know, I. I had a lot of things wrong in my head. But in the 1950s and 60s and then into the 70s, there's a lot of, like, political turmoil happening in Argentina. And in the 70s, they have a new leader, Videla, who is sort of this, like, very bad dictator. I guess not sort of. He is. He causes a lot of damage. And as I was reading the book, you know, I was stopping to, like, Google things and look things up and try to, like, you know, make some of the stuff really stick in my brain. And one of the things that was stunning to me was that he was only in charge for five years. And so I guess my question is, and maybe because of the moment we're in, what do we do in these moments? Like, you think that five years is no time but to disappear 30,000 people and to destroy these families. And, you know, not to mention a lot of economic turmoil started and happened during this time period into the more recent prep pass. Like, what are we to make of. Of this moment in history? And does it bode badly for us here in America?
- [12:56]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, I mean, it's a great question and one that is very top of mind for me. I think there is no direct comparison between what happened in Argentina during its dictatorship in the 70s and 80s and anything that we're seeing happening today. Because, I mean, we're talking about a regime. Videla, his regime not only disappeared pregnant women and new mothers and stole their babies, but their preferred means of killing people because they wanted plausible deniability about what they were doing, was to sedate them, strip them naked, load them into planes in groups, and then push them into either the river that runs next to Buenos Aires or flying a little bit further and pushing them out into the Atlantic Ocean so that their bodies would just completely disappear and nobody could pin those crimes on them. So it's just a level of brutality that is unimaginable. But I do think Argentina's history holds some really powerful lessons that feel more relevant, you know, today than they maybe did when I started working on this book. And I think the main lesson is, you know, Argentina presents a really stark cautionary tale about what can happen when a government puts its agenda before due process and before the law and the extreme places that. That can, you know, lead a country. And I think the Abuelas, you know, the subject of my book, offer a lesson at how ordinary people, especially when working together, when banding together, can respond in those. In those extreme moments. So I think that's the main takeaway for me.
- [14:47]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah. Can I ask you. This was unclear to me, which is why did the regime and those in power at the time to make sort of the decisions of the day to day of what would happen to the disappeared and the disappeared, you know, newborn children and the children that they took and then, you know, adopted out. Why did they decide to keep the children and not just kill the children as well? Like, at this point, we're talking about people who are willing to abduct pregnant women. Like, they're. They're already. At this point, that sort of feels like, well, we're here, you know, like. And in addition to the people like Patricia and her husband, who were political dissidents, if that's a reason to take people, they were also just taking people who were like, don't love it here. Like, the vibes are off. And so I guess, like, what was the moral line there? And why didn't they just kill the pregnant women? Like, why wait and keep them alive for a few months?
- [15:54]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, it's a great question, and I think it's a baffling one for. For many of us. The best explanation that I can offer is that the military was very influenced by Catholicism, the Argentine military, and the Argentine Catholic Church. And I'm very careful to say the Argentine Catholic Church, because the churches elsewhere in the region had very different responses to what was happening in their countries. But the Argentine military and the Argentine Catholic Church had a very close and intertwined relationship. They had actually participated in ousters and coups together before. And the military was very influenced by conservative Catholic ideology. And I think that, as you said, it was just where they drew their line. They were okay, you know, killing new mothers who had just given birth to newborns, but viewed newborns as malleable and defenseless and creatures that could be taken from, you know, an image that comes up a lot in Argentine histories. The Fruit of The poisonous tree. So taking the babies away from. From their biological families that had somehow fostered this ideology that the military disagreed with. You know, if they could take this blank slate of a creature and place it with a military family or a police family or a family that subscribed to the ideology of the military, that baby could be raised to have the correct. And correct is very much in quotes, the correct Argentine ideology. And they. They saw it as something noble. They thought, you know, they thought that they were saving not only the lives of these babies, but the souls of these babies.
- [17:43]
Tracy Thomas
Speaking of the Catholic Church, I can't help but remember that the previous pope, Pope Francis, was from Argentina. I tried to do a little digging, but what was his, like, What. I mean, there's famous Catholic priests from other places who were assassinated in these moments. Like Romero, Right? Wasn't he assassinated for, like, speaking out? I went to Catholic high school, so I vaguely remember about three things about Catholic things. But Pope Francis, I mean, we know he was not murdered in the 1970s and 80s. We know that he went on to have great success as an eventual pope. So what was going on, if anything, with him and his relationship to the dictatorship?
- [18:32]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, it's a great question. And it's actually. So I was in. I was living in Argentina when Pope Francis was elected, and I got to see all of the pomp and circumstance around his. His election and got up at like, two in the morning to watch the. Oh, gosh, you're going to have to help me here. If you went to Catholic high school.
- [18:54]
Tracy Thomas
But I'm Jewish. I just went to Catholic high school. I don't know. I just.
- [18:58]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
We're hopeless here. But when they. When they did the equivalent of swearing him in, you know, a horse conclave. Okay, maybe that.
- [19:07]
Tracy Thomas
Well, the conclave is like, when they pick them, and then when he does his first speech after.
- [19:11]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah.
- [19:12]
Tracy Thomas
And he, like, goes out on the balcony and he's like, I'm Pope.
- [19:16]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Exactly.
- [19:16]
Tracy Thomas
I think it's called a papal address. Let's call it that.
- [19:19]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Okay, let's call it that. Well, anyway, it took place at the Vatican, which is several hours ahead of Argentine time. And so the Argentine faithful gathered before dawn in the center of the city to watch his papal address on giant screens that the city government had set up. And I got to witness that. And I wrote a piece a long time ago about his.
- [19:45]
Tracy Thomas
Experience.
- [19:47]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Performing religious services in Argentina's more indigenous areas. They're called vicious miserias. And that was. Those types of activities were actually quite dangerous during the Dictatorship. I think the military viewed priests who ministered to the poor with a lot of suspicion. But there have been some accusations that Pope Francis during that time, not that he was necessarily directly involved in anything, but that he knew what was going on and didn't do enough. And so those are sort of. It's all blurry, like much of what happened during that period. But those. Those are accusations that are sometimes made.
- [20:32]
Tracy Thomas
I mean, you're so right that so much of it is blurry. I think one of the things as a reader that I was grappling with, and I think, you know, in your endnotes or like your. Your notes from the author towards the end, you sort of allude to, you are grappling with, too, is like some of these ethical quandaries that come up throughout the book. Like, for example, one that I would say is like, if you were a person who was not related to the dictatorship or the military in any way, and you adopted one of these children, and you raised them for 18, 20, whatever years without knowing the source of the child, you know, there is a question about the ethics, I guess, of. Of that, and also, like the trust in the adoption system, if it should be there, all of these things. There's also this question that comes later on around forcing children to give blood in order to test their DNA, to be able to hold the people who were in power accountable. And so I'm wondering how much are you concerned with, like, quote, unquote, right and wrong as you're reporting a book like this? Like, how much do the ethics of what's being debated matter to you as the writer? And how are you sort of grappling with presenting these things? Things I think I.
- [22:03]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
My main goal with this book was just to share this story with readers as accurately as possible. You know, as powerfully and accurately as possible. And to me, those things are sort of synonymous. It felt like the closer I could get to what really happened and the real story, and the more that I could just report that out, the more powerful the story would be. And it felt important not to shy away from those thornier questions and areas where the Abuelas have faced some criticism in their history, in part because this is a true story and I wanted it to feel true. And no story is a complete fairy tale. And I think glossing over those debates would have just really flattened this history in a way that didn't do justice to the fact that even though these events are really hard to believe, this is a true story. And so I think it felt very Important to me to give space to those debates, but not necessarily to choose a side, if that makes sense.
- [23:19]
Tracy Thomas
Okay. And then the sort of deeper version of this question is, like, now, not as an author, but as a person, how do you grapple with some of the more difficult pieces of this as you're thinking about writing it? Like you, Hailey, not necessarily what you're putting on the page, but like, how. Who you want to be in telling this story.
- [23:41]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, I mean, I made a decision very early on that I did not want to appear in the book. I don't appear.
- [23:50]
Tracy Thomas
We don't want you in the book.
- [23:51]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
No offense. You're lovely. No, I don't.
- [23:53]
Tracy Thomas
I hate. It's one of my big pet peeves where I'm like, you're writing history. I don't need to know. Like. And then I wrote an article about this. Like, no, thanks.
- [24:00]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
A hundred percent. I mean, I think it can be a very powerful tool. I can tell you. I have used it in magazine pieces before. Different and I can. Different and I think. But again, it's a very high bar for me. It needs to be justified. And I can tell you the cases in which I've used it, but I am generally very sparing with use of the first person. And so, yeah, that just felt very, very important to me. I'm not in the book at all until the author's note, but certainly, I mean, off page, I was grappling with a lot of these issues and trying to suss out what I thought about them. But at the end of the day, once again, maybe it's just the type of journalism that I was trained in, but I'm trying to present the debate in the most neutral way possible and let readers make their own decisions about them.
- [24:58]
Tracy Thomas
I guess the follow up to that then is like, how do you determine what is neutral?
- [25:05]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, it's a really good question.
- [25:09]
Tracy Thomas
I.
- [25:09]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Think, making sure that the research is just as robust as possible and that if there is a criticism on the other side, I'm at least aware of the criticism that's being made and, you know, can maybe draw that in.
- [25:29]
Tracy Thomas
Right.
- [25:30]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
But it's a really. It's a really great question. I know that I've, you know, I've listened to your other episodes and know that objectivity in writing and in journalism is something that, you know, you have thoughts on. I'm obsessed with. I'm obsessed with it. I mean, it's such a thorny topic.
- [25:46]
Tracy Thomas
I just. I personally am just always so curious because, like I said, your book and Books like your book are the kinds of book, kinds of books that I love the most. And I think when done well, as yours is, it brings up a lot of questions about ethics. Not only of, like, the subjects, but also of, you know, this outside person coming in and telling these stories and these histories. And I think, like, we in America are taught so much about this idea of, like, objectivity or, like, journalistic ethics. And the more that I read books like this and the more that I think about these types of stories, the harder it is for me to buy in to that and the more that I think what I'm actually having to do is, is buy into the author's own ethical code, Right? And then it's like more an individual thing, which is why I'm always asking people who write books that I really like and respect, like, well, how did you draw these lines? Right. Because, like, what Andrea Elliot told me is different than what, you know, I.
- [26:55]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Was fascinated listening to, like, Jason De Leon also.
- [26:59]
Tracy Thomas
Yes. And Jason, right, Because, like, is an anthropologist and he very much is in his book, you know, and, like, by choice. And I think in his case, he sort of had to be because he was not just doing reporting. He was a co conspirator in a lot of ways. Like, he was involved in a lot of the activity that is extremely morally ambiguous. Right. And like, depending on who you ask. And so I'm just. I. I think for me, as I'm, like, thinking about these things, I am now starting to realize that there isn't this bigger overreaching thing anymore and more that it comes down to whether or not I think the author handled the complexities with the care and rigor that it deserves. But I'm also so curious in how you think about it, you know.
- [27:46]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think this is sort of veering away from the original question, but one of the things that I found so compelling about this story was that I think, to build on your point, there are so many different versions of truth depending on who the truth teller is. But there is a truth in this story that is completely undeniable, and that was genetic truth. And that was what the grandmothers, in the end, really harnessed in order to. In their search to find their grandchildren. And that is a truth that is not subjective in any way, shape or form. That is just an object of truth. You cannot argue against genetic testing.
- [28:30]
Tracy Thomas
I think that's right. But also. Okay, this is what I thought was interesting about that, is that. And you know this as a journalist, it also depends on what the question you're asking is, right? The question is like, are you genetically related to this person? There's a yes or no answer, but, like, is this your family? That's a totally different question. And the genetics don't answer that question. Right. And it's like, that was the thing that I found so fascinating with your book is like, with the. With the question of the adopt adoptions that happened with people who are not affiliated with the military, like, who did not know about the disappearances and the children per se. Is that the question of is this. Is this my child? Legally is different than should the people who made this. Who made this happen be held accountable legally? Right. And so it's like, there's all these different. Your book is full of so many different truths and so many different questions, and the answers to those questions are sometimes, like, so at odds with each other. And so I just, like, as a reader, I'm trying to sort it out. So that's why I'm like, how were you trying to sort it out as you're, like, getting this information or reading it or, like, at some point, like, you have to make choices. Haley, the writer of, like, what story am I telling? And so I just. I'm just fascinated by. By that piece of what. What you've done here and what it. What the job requires you to do.
- [30:07]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, I mean, as you're talking, I feel like research. Like, research is my shield. I think in some cases, it was also my crutch. I remember over the course of the project, I was lucky to benefit from advice from authors that I really admire. And one person who was generous with their time was Patrick Radden Keefe. And I remember having a conversation with him about how I could have researched this book until the end of my life. Like, I could have lived to be Rosa Royce and Blitz years old and still be researching. You know, it was a comforting process for me. It was an exciting process for me. It did, I think, help me feel confident about portraying these ethical debates in their fullness. But I also had to know when to stop and when to start writing. And I think it was helpful to talk to Patrick about that because he was like, yes, I think that that's true for all narrative nonfiction writers. You have to just start writing at some point.
- [31:11]
Tracy Thomas
And it's just, like, helpful to talk to Patrick because, like, so cute. But, like, Patrick is a good example of someone who has a very strong point of view, like, you know, what he thinks about the thing in a way, and not as much and say nothing or say nothing. But, like, very much so in the Sackler book. Yeah, you know, like, very much so in his articles. Like, I don't. I never am. Like, oh, what's he thinking? Like, I'm like, oh, okay, I see. Like, it's just a. Again, it's just a different style and a different choice that, again, the author has to make about how they want. How. What they want their book to do. And I think in the case of your book, the, like, more removed, like, objectivity is helpful, at least for me as a reader who didn't know a lot of this information. Like, for you to have a more pointed point of view on the page, I think would have been. Would have made me less able to receive the contradictions, if that makes any sense.
- [32:12]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
That makes total sense. And I'm really glad that you had that experience of the book, I mean, I think so. I lived in Argentina for four years shortly after graduating college, and I did not know this story when I moved down. I had a background knowledge in what happened during the dictatorship. I knew that tens of thousands of Argentines had been disappeared by the military, but I had no idea the military was also abducting pregnant women and stealing their babies shortly after birth. But then I lived in Argentina for four years. And in Argentina, the Abuelas are iconic. Everybody knows who they are. Everybody knows this story for the most part. Although with time, that's starting to change. There are some younger. Yeah, there are some younger generations that don't, you know, for whom this story is not as present, but for the most part, the Abuela sort of this. The Abuela story, maybe not this particular story, but the Abuela story is very widely known. And so this book really is. You know, I'm hoping that someone who does know about the Abuelas will find value in this book, just in the depth of exploration and in the personal stories. But it was mainly written to educate people who had no idea that any of this happened. Because I was a history major in college, a lot of my friends were history majors. And one of the things that brought this idea back to life for me, because I had always been fascinated by the Aboas ever since living in Argentina. But I hadn't thought to write anything in depth about them until moving back to the States. And part of what fanned that desire was just talking to friends and realizing how few of them knew that this had happened and how unfamiliar people were with this period in Argentine history.
- [34:05]
Tracy Thomas
Okay, wait, I want to take a quick break, and then I Want to talk more about audience okay, let me just tell you this from firsthand experience. If you're starting a new business, that can be incredibly intimidating. When I first started this podcast, there seemed to be about a hundred million different things that I had to learn and figure out on my own. That's why I know how important it is to find the right business tool to help you get things done. Not only to get things done, but to make it simpler for millions of businesses. That tool is Shopify. Shopify powers 10% of all E commerce in the United States. Shopify has world class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and more. Whether you're a big brand or starting your first business, they make it feel approachable from day one. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store to match your beautiful brand. And they even help you get the word out like you have a big fancy marketing team behind you. If you're ready to sell, then you're ready for Shopify. Turn your big business idea into With Shopify on your side, sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com thestacks go to shopify.com thestax shopify.com thestacks hey friends, it is I, your host, Tracy Thomas. If you've been enjoying today's episode of the Stacks, but you're thinking, gosh, one episode a week is just not enough. I've got two places that you should check out to keep these bookish vibes going. The Stacks Pack on Patreon and my newsletter Unstacked on Substack. The Stacks Pack is where the community lives. We're talking book club meetups, a private discord chat, our year long Mega challenge. Plus members get a bonus episode every month. It is a great way to support me and the crew and for you to connect with other readers. Over on Unstacked, I keep the conversation going twice a week. On Monday you get my grown up show and Tell, which is basically where I tell you about all the things I loved and hated in the last week. And then on Fridays you get something special. Sometimes it's a bonus episode, sometimes it's an installment of my non fiction files. There is both a free and a paid option over on Substack plus right now through September 22nd. If you join in either place, you can get my Nonfiction reading guide 30 book recommendations of fantastic nonfiction just for you. If you're looking to meet other book lovers. If you want to support this Black Woman Run Independent Podcast if you just want more of me yelling at you, come hang out with me on patreon@patreon.com the stacks and subscribe to my newsletter at Tracy Thomas substack.com planning a summer.
- [36:51]
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- [37:51]
Tracy Thomas
Okay, we are back in your I want to say acknowledgments, but it could have been the author's note. You talked about your own grandmother as your audience for this book or who you were writing toward, and I'd love for you to just maybe say more about why her or how what about her made you want to write? Like, made you feel like that's who you were writing to.
- [38:14]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, so my grandmother, Elizabeth, everyone called her Betty or Bets, passed away during the course of this project. So she was 99. Yeah. Um, so almost Rosa age. But. And she first of all just reminded me a lot of Rosa. I think part of why I was so drawn to Rosa is because she felt very familiar. Um, my grandma was an artist. She was a language teacher. She actually taught Spanish and that, you know, she was kind of seeded an early love of Spanish in me, although she was very exacting and I she would like run these pronunciation drills and I could never quite measure up. But she was just extremely curious and a woman ahead of her time. And she also just had almost the identical reading taste to me. Or maybe I just inherited, you know, maybe that's genetic and she just passed it along. But she almost exclusively read nonfiction and she mostly read just nonfiction tomes. She read a lot of Doris Kearns Goodwin, you know, a lot of David McCullough. She loved really thorough histories. And yeah, I just, you know, she never got to read this book. As I said, she Passed away while I was working on it. And she'd suffered from Alzheimer's for quite a while before that, but she was always top of mind for me. This is a book about grandmothers. I was extremely close to her, and so it. It felt powerful to have. I don't know, I think it felt less intimidating, too, to be writing for my. Writing for my grandma than to think about who else might be, you know, picking this book up. But, yeah, I hope she would have liked it.
- [40:03]
Tracy Thomas
I mean, it's so good. Of course she would have liked it. Are you kidding? Like, I'm a stranger and I like it. Your grandma would have loved it. As you're thinking about, you know, you're talking about your friends who are also history majors and people who really don't know this story. What? Like, I know that I get obsessed with things and I go, like, really deep, and then I assume that everybody else knows everything. So how are you sort of balancing your deep knowledge as you're researching and reading and going, you know, deep, deep, deep into this stuff with telling us, like, what. Were there people that you were relying on to kind of bring you out of your sort of rabbit hole? Or were there other things? Like, because I. I did not feel like I didn't know. Like, I felt like as I was reading it, you were taking care of me. Like, I was like, oh, shoot. You would say someone. Then you'd be like, you know, the guy who did this? And I'd be like, thank you. I didn't. I couldn't quite remember. But now I do know. Okay, we're back. Like. Like, the doctor comes up a lot. And the first few times he comes up, I was like, wait, who? And then you'd be like, the doctor. And then later when he comes up, you'd remind me. I was like, oh, no, I remember. That's the doctor. So, like, how were you thinking about that kind of stuff?
- [41:13]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, I mean, writing is writing, and particularly writing a book of this length is such a team sport. And I relied really heavily on my editors friends, you know, I think. So my. The editors that I worked with in this case did not have a background knowledge of this material, and I think that that was really helpful. They also didn't have a background in much science, nor do I. And there's a lot of science in this book as well. And I viewed both of those things as advantages because I wanted this book to be accessible once again. I wanted it to have value to people who do know a lot, just in its depth. I Think that that's how I hopefully tried to add value for those people. But I wanted it to be accessible to people who came into this knowing nothing about Argentina, nothing about genetics. And so I think having editors who did not have a background in these things, who could point out holes where I was jumping from A to C, was extremely helpful. I also just enlisted a lot of friends to read things. And, you know, some of those friends were Argentine or had spent time in Argentina. One of my mentors was somebody that I worked with at the Economist, who kind of brought me on, and he read an entire draft of the book. Actually, two people at the Economist did, which was really generous of them. And so I got a lot of notes back from people, and it was immensely helpful to hear, like, oh, I totally didn't understand this. You need more detail here or. No, people basically know about this. You can pick up the pace a little bit here. So I kind of relied on other people to point out blind spots. I wrote with my intuition and then outsourced it to other people to see if there were gaps.
- [43:05]
Tracy Thomas
I think it worked. I think it worked. Okay, good.
- [43:07]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Well, thank you, everybody who participated in that.
- [43:11]
Tracy Thomas
You made it fun for me. I mean, not fun, but, you know, it worked for me. It worked for me. Speaking of the science stuff, there's this figure in the book, Mary Claire King, who I did not know her name, but she can. I don't think this is a spoiler. She discovered braca, the brca, the cancer. Breast cancer gene. And then she also, like, discovered the way to do the DNA testing that the Abuelas needed. I mean, what is. Are there, like, books about her?
- [43:48]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
There are books that mention her, but I, over the course of this project, was very much a championing of the idea that she should write her own book. She's also a really brilliant writer.
- [43:59]
Tracy Thomas
I mean, she's like an American hero here.
- [44:01]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Absolutely. And she is such a compelling person. So I got to she in the reporting process. I probably got to spend the most time with Mary Claire King. Right.
- [44:11]
Tracy Thomas
You talk about that in the acknowledgments. It's like, your shortest interview was, like, three hours, and your longest one was nine, and you were, like, eating snacks to, like, stay.
- [44:19]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Like, the first time. I learned my lesson because she's in her 70s, and I think we started our meeting at, like, 10 or 11, and my blood sugar dips. I need. I'm a snacks person. Like, I need.
- [44:31]
Tracy Thomas
We're getting there. We're getting there.
- [44:33]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
I know you have your process. I have A big process nerd. So I'm excited for that. But, yeah, the first time we met, we met for three or three and a half hours, and we did not take a break to eat or drink anything. And I was so woozy by the end. And so I learned my lesson. And for our second interview, I baked her a banana bread so it looked like a kind and, you know, Cardi's gesture. But I was like, if I come into this interview with shared food, then I can eat it and, like, you know, sustain my energy to talk to this amazing woman.
- [45:05]
Tracy Thomas
Cut this open right now. Because, like, what if you gave it to her and she just, like, put it away and then you just. Oh, my God.
- [45:11]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Devastating.
- [45:11]
Tracy Thomas
Where's the banana rat?
- [45:14]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
No, I was not gonna let that happen. I'd learned my lesson. But, yeah, she's absolutely incredible. I really do hope that she, you know, writes her own story someday because it deserves to be much more widely known in its entirety than I think it is.
- [45:30]
Tracy Thomas
I just. I mean. And also, as a baseball gal, her origin stories come from baseball, like, baseball statistics. With her dad, she easily could have been, you know, the. The GM of the Cubs or who, you know, like, she easily could have taken a totally different.
- [45:49]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, Moneyball.
- [45:50]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah, exactly. I'm just like, oh, sorry, Mary Claire King, you're just a real life genius. And, like, do gooder genius. It's. It's unfortunate for the rest of us that people like that exist. It's like, the bar is so high. How dare you. Okay, again, I really was mining your end note or your notes and your acknowledgments. But you mentioned that on your first draft you had 3,000, 657 notes.
- [46:19]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Correct.
- [46:20]
Tracy Thomas
That is so many notes. Okay, so I have a few questions. One is how many notes ended up in the final draft? Like, how much was cut from the notes?
- [46:28]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Almost. I think almost two thirds of the notes were cut. So I think in the end it was close to 15. No, it was. It was 1600 notes. And that makes up about 80 pages. Event notes.
- [46:43]
Tracy Thomas
And how do you decide what notes get the boot?
- [46:51]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, I. I think I mentioned this somewhere in the note on sources, but if something was easily Googleable, so if it was a date. So I. I was very lucky. I worked with an outside fact checker for this project, actually several outside fact checkers, because the timeline was a little bit compressed. And so a lot of the book was annotated in keeping their work in mind. And so I even annotated things like dates that were very Easily googleable. And so in the last, you know, in the final draft, I took those notes out because I figured that the reader could look them up. That was basically, basically, if it could be easily googled, it got the axis.
- [47:33]
Tracy Thomas
And how do you keep all of this stuff straight? Like, what are you, like pictures on a wall with the red string? Are you a timeline person? Like, because we also get a detailed timeline at the beginning of the book, which I started reading and then I decided not to finish reading because it was starting to tell me what was going to happen with the Abuelas later. And I was like, I don't want this because I'm gonna read the book.
- [47:55]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Right.
- [47:55]
Tracy Thomas
But like, how do you, Haley, keep yourself clear and organized as you're working to know not only what you have, but maybe also what you don't have, what you need?
- [48:07]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Absolutely. I mean, it took me a while to find systems that work for me. And one of my biggest regrets at the beginning of this project is that there weren't really resources out there for how to. There are a lot of tomes about writing good narrative nonfiction, but not about organizing research. I found that quite paralyzing at the beginning. I was like, how if I read a great detail and I don't want to forget it, but I'm not going to start writing this book for another nine months, where do I put it so I don't forget it. It was very stressful for me and ultimately I kind of stumbled my way into a couple of systems that worked really well for me. So the first thing, and this is very broad, but I used Google Drive to organize everything. And that was amazing because everything is searchable, you know, even the contents of PDFs and things like that. So if I, for instance, remembered one of the details in the book. And to me, like, great narrative nonfiction is so reliant on these tiny. It's just a compilation of amazing little gems of details. And so on their own they seem insignificant, but actually they're so important for building a world and building, you know, building a compelling narrative. And so, for instance, one of the details I wanted was what the preferred brand of cigarettes was that was smoked by left leaning youth in the 1970s. And I knew that I had read the detail somewhere, but I couldn't quite remember where. I didn't yet have my system for tracking these things, but I could just type in cigarillos into Google Drive and it would pull up every document in my drive that had that until I could find, oh, it was Parisiens or whatever. So organizing every, putting everything, images, text, PDFs, everything into Google Drive was really key. And then the two things that were really helpful to me. One, you already mentioned building a massive timeline. So there's this timeline in the front of the book. I actually tried to excise a lot from that as it related to the Abuelas because I didn't want to give the reader too much of an indication of what was going to happen with them before it did in the book. But I had this massive chronology, I think it was 100 pages or something by the end of historical events and events that were happening to the Abuelas. And the subjects that I was following really closely, the Royce and Bilt family. And it was all sort of organized by year. And that just helped me to see how the history interacted with the personal stories in the book. And it was extremely helpful for visualizing. And then the other document that I had was just. I called it a catch all document. And it was actually. It also grew to be massive. But that was the place where if I read a really great detail, but for instance, the book was not going to be one where I took just copious notes about every single page. I wasn't going to annotate the whole book. It was an alphabetized list of various topics. And for instance, that cigarette detail, I could have a heading that said left leaning youth descriptions and then that would be in there. And I had to make sure that everything was like linked and sourced in the moment. Otherwise you just forget where those.
- [51:39]
Tracy Thomas
You found it.
- [51:40]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
And it's the most. I mean, for me it's. That is just the most hellish feeling of knowing that you read something and it was a great detail and not remembering where you read it. And so you can't. Or at least in my case, I couldn't use it.
- [51:55]
Tracy Thomas
Right.
- [51:55]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah. And there were some really heartbreaking things that I know that I read that I just had to let go.
- [52:02]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah, well, that's my next question, which is it doesn't have to be this specific, but like what something that's not in the book that you wish could have been.
- [52:12]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, I mean, I think I say this in the author's note, but I did just struggle, even though I felt a lot of conviction around the idea that this should be focused on one family. But that doesn't mean I didn't struggle with that decision because the Abuelas de pas de macho, they really derive their power from working together. And so focusing on one family more than another at times just felt incongruent with that mission of we're all in this together and no one's grandchild is more important to find than anyone else's. And even, you know, even once some grandmothers experienced success and did reconnect with their grandchildren, they continued to be a part of the organization and threw all of their energy into finding the grandchildren of the grandmothers who had not yet had that privilege and luck. And so I think, you know, on an emotional level, I wish I could have just woven in more of the Abuela stories and more of the stories of the grandchildren, but I'm not sure it would have made it a better book. So intellectually, I don't necessarily think that I would, would change, make a change in that direction.
- [53:28]
Tracy Thomas
Again, you mentioned this in I think the author's note about like being an empath. And I'm, I just, I've never heard like an investigative journalist, historian type person say that before. And so I'm wondering, like, how did that manifest for you? Like, what is that? What does that look like for you? How did that either get in your way or were there times where you felt like, like that was helpful to you or useful to you?
- [53:54]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, I, so I am, I think, in the authors when I say I'm an incorrigible empath. And sometimes it does feel extreme, like I'm the type of person where if I'm watching a TV show and I know something bad is about to happen and I'm not watching with my husband who will not let me do this, but if I'm watching it alone, I have to pause, I have to like, pace around the room, I have to prepare for the bad thing to happen. Sometimes I turn the volume down like it's tv, it's a fake story. Yeah, that is just how I've always been. And I think it cuts both ways. I mean, I think I love listening and I think that for people, especially when I'm asking people to share stories of immense trauma, that that maybe helps them feel more comfortable sharing their stories with me. You know, I'm not going to stare at them completely stone faced and then look at my list of questions and move on to the next. It, I think, is going to feel like more of a conversation. But certainly I think it probably made writing this book a lot more stressful for me than it would have been if I just had a different type of character. You know, I think it's really hard to work on something for four and a half years and to ask so much of people, you know, to ask them to share so much of their time. And again, I'm not asking them to share the happiest moments in their lives, or at least not only that. There's a lot that is so difficult about what I was asking them to do and the memories that I was asking them to mine. And so, of course, I was going to worry about how they would react to the depiction of those stories. I think sometimes I feel like I'm in the wrong profession because I feel those things really deeply. But again, to focus more on the positive, I do think it also allows me to build trust with sources that maybe I wouldn't be able to otherwise.
- [56:02]
Tracy Thomas
No, I think it's good. I mean, we need more empathetic writers, historians. Okay, I teased this earlier. How do you write snacks and beverages? Now, we know you like a snack, so don't. Don't let me down. Haley. This is really important. So tell me about it.
- [56:22]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah. So I can write. I have to preface this because I'm going to sound completely deranged and very high maintenance. I can write if the pressure is on in any situation.
- [56:33]
Tracy Thomas
Okay.
- [56:34]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
But I have developed a very set system that it, like, definitely empowers my most productive writing sessions. And I feel like I've honed it quite a bit. So the first thing is I, for the past couple of years, have mostly written while walking. Like, I have one of those walking paths that goes under my desk.
- [56:59]
Tracy Thomas
Yeah.
- [57:00]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
And I don't do that when I'm in the more intense phases of editing and paring things back and honing things. But especially if I'm struggling to get words on paper in that drafting phase, it was so incredibly helpful to me because if your feet are moving, it feels very awkward for your hands to be still. Like, it feels very awkward to just stare at a blank, static piece of paper.
- [57:29]
Tracy Thomas
Sure.
- [57:30]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Everything feels like it needs to. To move. And I just. I didn't have a lot of time, and I wasn't getting to go on a lot of walks outside. And so just sort of like. So that is the first thing. And I am a huge prosthetizer of the. The walking pad. It takes some getting used to. I was super dizzy for, you know, two. And now I'm obsessed. Yeah. And then I need a huge thing of water. You've probably seen peaks of it, but, like, giant tears, giant Stanley cup. I'm very addicted to iced coffee, so I have a second little cooler over there. Cheers. And then if I'm feeling fancy, I'll light a candle. But the main Thing is, really, if I can walk, if it's in the drafting phase. Oh, and I have a monitor. I don't write on a laptop. It needs to be. I need a big screen.
- [58:25]
Tracy Thomas
So, like, a big screen, then like a separate keyboard.
- [58:27]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah.
- [58:27]
Tracy Thomas
Also.
- [58:28]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah.
- [58:30]
Tracy Thomas
Okay. But that's not a snack.
- [58:32]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Oh, snack, snack, snack. Yeah. Okay. I'm a big popcorn person because you can just like, mindlessly chew it. I have toddlers, so I'm just like, my house is drowning in string cheese. I would say those are two main ones. And then after lunch, I just have to have some sort of chocolate, usually dark. I have a favorite brand, if you're interested.
- [58:54]
Tracy Thomas
I am. I am.
- [58:55]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Alter Eco sea salt.
- [58:57]
Tracy Thomas
Okay. We will link to that in the show notes. Everything else smart that you said, but also the. Okay. And then what's the word you can never spell correctly on the first try?
- [59:07]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
There are a couple. I'm not the best speller, despite my profession. Parmesan. I don't think I could spell it in the chat.
- [59:14]
Tracy Thomas
If I try, I don't think I can spell it that either. Yeah, I feel like there's an extra vowel that I'm not thinking of.
- [59:21]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Or is there one less vowel than you're thinking?
- [59:23]
Tracy Thomas
That's a great question.
- [59:24]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
I don't know. I'm just.
- [59:25]
Tracy Thomas
I don't know either. It's not like I'm either thinking of too many or not enough vowels. I'm definitely not thinking of the right number of vowels. Okay. For people who love this book, A Flower Traveled in My Blood, what other books would you recommend to them that you think are in conversation with your work?
- [59:46]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
I mean, there are so many books. I have an entire shelf of inspirational books that are just out of view over here, and it's about 40 books long. But I guess, you know, I feel like I don't need to plug say Nothing, because people know that book.
- [60:04]
Tracy Thomas
You don't need to plug it. But to me, that is like the closest comp of something that I've read in the sense that it's like this piece of history and. And it spans a lot of time, and we sort of go in with this family, but it also does all the history work. And it's also sort of maybe suspenseful, mysterious in some ways. Like, they're very much in conversation. You don't have to plug it.
- [60:27]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
That's the highest, highest compliment that you could possibly give me. And, yeah, I think there are a lot of thematic parallels as well, and that's why I reached out to Patrick to talk because his book is an intimate family story and also covers this wide swath of history. It opens with the disappearance of a mother. Like, there's a lot that is.
- [60:49]
Tracy Thomas
We're not going to plug it, but don't pop. Don't waste your time.
- [60:53]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
I'm not going to plug it because everyone has probably read it, listens to your podcast.
- [60:56]
Tracy Thomas
Because I plugged it a million times. You know my story with that book you were in.
- [61:01]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Wait, I do know, because I'm a stalker. Because I was. But you were going into labor.
- [61:06]
Tracy Thomas
Well, I was reading it as I was pregnant at the end of my pregnancy. And yes, it was like the last book I was reading.
- [61:10]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Oh, my gosh.
- [61:11]
Tracy Thomas
So then I switched to, like, a sleep training book, and I didn't finish it until last year. Like, I had to go back and I reread it last summer. I had to start over.
- [61:20]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
So funny.
- [61:21]
Tracy Thomas
I just never went back. Like, I just. It just, like.
- [61:24]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
I mean, I'm impressed that you were, like, packing books. I'm obviously a voracious reader, but I was not packing books in my hospital to go back. I definitely.
- [61:31]
Tracy Thomas
Well, I. I was not. No, I was not at the hospital. This is like the week before. It was like, oh, and then I found I had to have a schedul scheduled. Csat, blah, blah, blah. So then I found out, and I was like, okay, let me switch. So I took the sleep training book with me to the hospital because I had a schedule, so I had to, like, wait.
- [61:46]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Yeah, the.
- [61:47]
Tracy Thomas
Everything was ready to go. Anyways, sorry. What books would you recommend that you would actually recommend and not me just hijacking.
- [61:56]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
No. So, I mean, I definitely recommend. Say that it's not that.
- [61:59]
Tracy Thomas
I know.
- [62:00]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Of course. You know, I think that's the most aspirational comp that I could possibly have. One book that came out longer ago. And so people might not be as familiar with it, but it was very formative for me because I took a class with its author, and she was the one who really awakened my love for narrative nonfiction is a spirit catches you. Yeah. And you.
- [62:23]
Tracy Thomas
I knew you were gonna say that. You don't know this, but the episode that people hear the week before your episode. Also, this book is recommended.
- [62:31]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Oh, wait. Amazing. I love it. I love that this book is getting its.
- [62:35]
Tracy Thomas
I've never read it, but I'm going to because I saw that you thanked her in your acknowledgments, and I was like, oh, my God, Megan just mentioned that book.
- [62:42]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
So, yes, it is fantastic. And once again, it is an intimate family story, but also gets at this, these stories of, you know, much bigger systems and how those, how the family system and the wider system interact. And she's just the world's most beautiful writer. And yes, I highly recommend this book to everyone. You know, I know you're an Adam Higginbotham fan. His works were really inspirational for me. Bob Kolker, Hidden Valley Road Like, I feel like we just listening to your podcast. Your taste is very similar to mine in nonfiction.
- [63:21]
Tracy Thomas
Do you have the same editor as Adam? Because you're both at Avid is a good question.
- [63:26]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
So my editor that I worked with most closely actually left Avid, my publisher write as I was finishing the book. And so I actually don't know who Adam's editor is. That's a good question. But we share a publisher and so I get to steal his galleys when I go into the office. But I also buy them because they're amazing. Yeah. And I also, I do try to read some fiction as well, like. Go ahead. So I mean the book that I tore through most recently, I was lucky. I got to go to this amazing book conference conference earlier in the year with some other Simon and Schuster authors. And one of the authors was Rob Franklin.
- [64:04]
Tracy Thomas
Oh yeah.
- [64:05]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
And I tore through great Black Hope recently. And the bar is basically just is this really beautifully written? And do I feel like from reading like everything for me and this is bad. I need to program myself out of this. But reading a novel, it needs to be a pleasurable experience. But I also feel feel like I need to draw something of use from it. And for me that is, is this author really deft at world building in ways that I can try to think about and apply to my non fiction writing? And oh man, does that book excel in that department. I mean it is just a work of art. It's beautiful.
- [64:44]
Tracy Thomas
I need to read it. I need to read it. Okay, I have one final question for you and I'm gonna put a second slight caveat on it because we already talked about your grandmother. So if you could have one person, dead or alive, who is not your grandmother, read this book, who would you want it to be?
- [64:57]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Oh, gosh. I think my answer would have been my grandmother. So now I'm going to have to think a little bit. I think Jorge Rafael Videla, because I would want him to grapple with the seismic and continuing impact of the terror that he wrought on Argentina.
- [65:22]
Tracy Thomas
Okay, everybody at home listening to this conversation. A Flower Traveled in My Blood has now been out as you're listening to this for eight days. You are gonna want to read it because I feel strongly that we're going to be talking about this book for the rest of this year, but also for a much longer time. So you want to get in on the ground floor so that you can talk to me about it and so we can enjoy it together. It is out in the world now. I listened to some of the audiobook. It is really well done. I personally recommend reading it off the page only because there's so many details and references and there's two picture sections and there's just like so much stuff you're gonna. And I'm sure you can get all of that on a PDF or whatever with the audiobook, but I think you gotta, like, be in this one a little bit. So the audiobook is great. Like, she does a great job, but I listened to a few chunks on it through audio. But if you're asking me my opinion, which you're getting, I would say go with the physical copy, but either way, please read this book. I know you're gonna love it. I. I just. It's. It's one of those books, you guys. So please get it. Please read it. Haley, thank you so much for being here.
- [66:33]
Haley Cohen Gilliland
Thank you, Tracy. That was really, really fun.
- [66:35]
Tracy Thomas
And everyone else, we will see you in the stacks. All right, y', all, that does it for us today. Thank you so much for listening. And thank you again to Haley Cohen Gilliland for joining the show. I'd also like to say a huge thank you to Alexandra Premiani, Alana Gold, and Eva Karens for making today's episode possible. Remember, our book club pick for July is God Help the Child by Toni Morrison, which we will Discuss on Wednesday, July 30th with Dana A. Williams. If you love the show and you want inside access to it, head to patreon.com the stacks to join the Stacks Pack and check out my newsletter at Tracy Thomas substack.com make sure you are subscribed to the Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you're listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, please leave us a rating and a review. For more from the Stacks, follow us on social media at the Stacks Pod, on Instagram threads and TikTok and check out our website@thestackspodcast.com this episode of the Stacks was edited by Christian Duenas with production assistance from Wykea Frielo. Our graphic designer is Robin McCrite, and our theme music is from Tagirijis, the Stax is created and produced by me, Tracy Thomas.