“So why does she look so scared?” my seven-year-old daughter Ella asks. I sigh. This is how many of our conversations have started since I received the advanced copies of my book over the summer. Almost daily, Ella strolls into my home office, mills around for a few minutes, and then doodles on my to-do list. I have a three-shelved, red bookcase holding several copies of Death in the Air, my new narrative nonfiction true crime book. She immediately snatches one, flips it over and gazes at the glamorous woman on the cover—a model from the 1950s, a raven-haired beauty reminiscent of Jacqueline Onassis with a string of pearls dangling just below a silk scarf, wrapped tightly around her mouth. Her eyes are black and intense. It’s a powerful photograph. And Ella is right—she does look scared.
On this day in September, I brace myself for yet another uncomfortable conversation. “Well,” I begin, “remember the subject of my book?” She nods and glances at the cover before replying: “A little girl’s dad dies from a fog and a guy kills some women.”
The plot is a little more complicated, but that’s the gist. Here are a few more details: A fog-turned-smog enveloped post-war London for five days in December, 1952, killing as many as 12,000 people, who essentially choked to death. I tell the story of several survivors including a doctor, a police officer, a politician and a 13-year-old girl whose father died from walking home through the smog. And then there’s the serial killer who was trapped in his house, along with his next victim. John Reginald Christie was a notorious murderer in London—a monster who strangled at least six women and stashed their bodies around his home and in his back garden. Ella always focuses on him.
“But why is the lady scared?”
“OK,” I say to her, “the woman symbolizes both threads of the book.” I say that phrase quickly so I don’t have to explain what “thread” means—I’m already halfway down the rabbit hole, as it is. “She’s wearing a scarf, which many women wore during the Great Smog, to protect herself from the smoke and fumes.” My second grader’s eyes wander as I begin to describe the causes of air pollution, using phrases like “smoke particles” and “sulfur dioxide.” She quickly interrupts my science lesson. “OK, OK. What else?”
“So the man who killed those women used his hands to strang . . . ” Now Ella’s eyes are wide and I immediately regret that last bit. In fact, I bemoan the entire conversation. I had just chipped away another little bit of her innocence. Had she been an adult, I would have explained that the serial killer used coal gas to disable his victims before he strangled them. Thankfully, I stopped short—but it was close. These sorts of distressing conversations never happened before I became an author.
When we started our family eight years ago, I had just one career—I was a senior lecturer of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. When the girls were four, they visited my office on campus. They ran from room to room, collecting pencils and scraps of paper from the recycling bins. They ran up and down the aisles of our large theater-style classrooms and plopped down at our TV news desk as I took pictures. My job, to them, was clearly defined: “Mama teaches big kids how to write.” Easy enough. The most complicated concept back then was why I would fail a student. “But why did David have to leave your class?” my other daughter, Quinn, wanted to know. “Because he didn’t want to turn in his work.” I answered that question ad nauseum, but it was a simple response.
Four years ago, I became an author and those conversations changed. I signed a book contract in 2015 and since then I’ve been locked away in my office from 4 a.m.-6 a.m. every morning, typing away while they sleep; I continue writing when they leave for school. That schedule has worked well, except on the mornings when they wake up early. Often they’ll come staggering in my office, not fully conscious, but begging for attention (we’re all early risers in this family). “Come out and help me find my old math homework,” Ella will ask. “You’re always working on your stupid book.” Ouch. She’s right again. I do work too much.
Unlike some writers, I’m really skilled at time management—probably too skilled. I know precisely how much time I need to finish a chapter, a page, or a thought. I can schedule intense book writing into a small, finite amount of time. I know that, if my research is in front of me, that I can write three pages during one 27-minute episode of Odd Squad. And the girls hate it. They want me to sit right next to them, laughing at their silly show (though Odd Squad has its brilliant moments). I see that slice of time as the perfect opportunity to write—they’re totally distracted and don’t need my attention. And now that I have two jobs (I’m still at UT), I need to protect every free moment I have. But sometimes I just flat-out fail as a parent. And I’m certainly not the only one.
My friend Pamela Colloff and I often talk about struggling with our dual role as writer and parent. Our kids are about the same age—all four are in elementary school. Pam was an award-winning reporter for Texas Monthly Magazine and now writes for both The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica. She travels quite a lot, much more than I do. Her children don’t seem to resent her home office like mine, but Pam’s kids are frustrated when she leaves for a work trip. “Why do you have to go?” they demand to know. Of course, many parents travel and the kids can usually adapt. But most children don’t understand what a parent does for a career—our kids do. We’re journalists and we write about messy, sometimes scary things. And it’s a stressful job, much of the time. “They see me working hard,” she’s told me. “And I make it clear that what I’m working on is really important.”
Pam has written some incredible stories, but her most powerful have been about wrongful conviction. In 2010, she began crafting a series of articles for Texas Monthly about Anthony Graves, a man wrongfully convicted for murder. Years later, she wanted to explain to her son why those stories were so meaningful. He understands now that life is complicated: there are innocent people in jail, but also many people who belong there, perhaps because of drugs or poverty. People can’t be compartmentalized, as children tend to believe. “There are good police officers and bad police officers,” she explains to her kids.
Pam and I both struggle with staying present when our children are home, as do most parents who work. The closer my book inches toward publication the harder it is to ignore emails from well-meaning friends or colleagues. There’s always something to research, always something to write. And part of me believes my girls deserve to know why I’m distracted, why I can’t always stay present: this book, I believe, could be such an important weapon in our battle for clean air. But that’s a heavy weight to place on the shoulders of two 7-year-olds. They don’t yet understand the power held by an author.
I also struggle with their curiosity—because I love it so much. They want to know about everything and I want them to know about everything . . . in theory. But there are certain things that they just aren’t mature enough to understand—like why a man would strangle his wife and bury her under the floorboards of their parlor. Or why a government would continue to sell a dirty fuel that was clearly killing people. My young daughters can’t possibly process those things and they shouldn’t have to, at least not right now. I love their curiosity, their openness to new ideas and I want to foster that without giving them inappropriate information, complete with nightmares. But as the children of a writer, I’m proud that they have a deeper understanding of many issues because I choose to explain them—the nuances of learning, as Pam Colloff says.
I’m sure I’ll continue to make questionable parenting choices: like over the summer, when Quinn and I conducted a short historical reenactment of Alexander Hamilton’s duel with Aaron Burr. She was slightly traumatized by “shooting” Mom (AKA Hamilton).
I still enjoy spooking them, just a little. A few months ago, Quinn requested that I make up a bedtime story, but then couched it with, “NOT a scary story, Mama.” Sigh. Those are really the only stories I know, but I managed to improvise. I like creepy subjects, especially historical true crime. But that doesn’t mean my daughters will feel the same. So as long as they see that I’m working hard, but still prioritizing them, then what more do they need to know right now? They can read my books when they’re 15. Maybe 16.
As my publication date nears, my anxiety level ticks upward each day. I worry that my daughters will resent me—and not just me—but books. All books. But then a few days ago I spotted Ella clicking away on her Kindle. I took a peek. She’s writing a book entitled: The Haunted House. It was a dark and stormy night with loads of crunchy, brown leaves—I’ll work on her overuse of adjectives.
But oh boy . . . it was a good start.
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Kate Winkler Dawson’s book Death in the Air is available now from Hachette.
