- Born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, John Cribb, is a historian, educator, former public servant, and best-selling author.

While an author of nonfiction, his first novel, "Old Abe," is the story of the last five years of Abraham Lincoln's life.

I'm Holly Jackson.

Join us as we bring you powerful stories from both new and established Southern authors, as we sit by the river.

(bright music) ♪ - [Announcer] By the River is brought to you in part by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, strengthening community, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USCB, The Pat Conroy Literary Center.

- Hey there, it is another beautiful day here at our waterfront studio.

You're watching By the River, it's our love letter to Southern writing.

And we want to thank you for joining us.

You know, we bring you powerful stories from both new and established South Carolina and Southern authors.

And joining us here today is the author of "Old Abe," John Cribb.

And Mr. Cribb, thanks so much for coming.

You know, never a bad visit to Beaufort.

- No, not today, it's beautiful here today.

- [Holly] It is, we're just blessed with some great weather, and awesome view here at our waterfront studio.

- Well thank you for having me, I appreciate it.

- Let's get right to it, and beautiful book, beautiful cover, but you can't tell a book by its cover.

Tell us about the inside.

And when it started, and just, the whole shebang.

- Well, the answer to that question is a little bit embarrassing.

I got the idea for the book way back in 2006, believe it or not.

And I was back living in Spartanburg, South Carolina, my hometown, I'd been away for a long time.

And I checked out of the library, Spartanburg County Public Library, great library, Carl Sandberg's landmark six volume biography of Lincoln, and I've been a Lincoln fan for a long time.

So I was plowing my way through these six volumes.

And at the same time, I re-read Irving Stone's wonderful novel about Michelangelo, "The Agony and the Ecstasy," which I think, I don't know when he wrote that back in the 70s, I guess.

I had read it in high school for a European history class, and it's just a novelized telling of Michelangelo's life.

So it set me to wondering if I could do the same thing for Abraham Lincoln.

That was the original idea for this book.

That's not the way the book turned out.

That book turned out to be, to focus on the last five years of his life.

It would just, his whole life turned, it was too unwieldy for me.

But that's what set me going on the book.

But I wanted it to be historically accurate.

So I did a lot of research on it.

And anyway, fast forward, it was published late last year.

So you do the math, right?

My wife teases me.

She says, "John, you know, "it only took four years to fight the Civil War.

"It took more than three times that length of time "to write this darn thing."

But in my defense, it was a very, you know, on and off again, thing.

Sometimes it would just sit in a drawer for months, or years.

- That's where I was going next.

So talk about that time span.

What were you doing and what was that research process like?

- Well I was doing other projects, other books.

I mean, I've been, you know, in one way or another writing for a living since I got out of college.

So I had other projects going on, and this was kind of a part-time labor of love.

The research basically fell into three categories.

One is just lots of book reading.

I've got about probably close to 300 books about Lincoln, just on my bookshelf at home now.

- [Holly] Wow.

- Everything from general biographies to a lot of old books by people who knew Lincoln and wrote about their firsthand interactions with him, what he said, what he did when they were with him.

That was very important for my research.

So a lot of old book reading.

And then, you know, a good amount of internet research.

There's an amazing amount of great information about Lincoln on the internet.

His collected works are all online and searchable.

You can go online to the Library of Congress and see his original documents in his handwriting, and all kinds of stuff.

And then the third category was just travel.

I got to go to, you know, I mean, I've been to every major Lincoln site more than once, every place from Sinking Spring Farm in Kentucky, where he was born, to Ford's Theater, where he died, and everywhere in between.

And that was extremely important for my research too, because this is a novel, to walk the ground that he walked, try to soak up the atmosphere that he was in.

And that really helps you get a feel for somebody, I think.

And of course the people that work in those sites, the docents, the volunteers, the park rangers, the historians that work there often experts in that one slice of Lincoln's life.

So they bring a valuable insight.

- Because they're usually super fans themselves.

- Right, right.

Yes.

So anyway, between all the research and, you know, note-taking, and writing, and rewriting, and rewriting, believe me, there was a lot of rewriting going on in this book.

It took a long time to finally get it done.

- And you said you've loved him for a long time.

Talk about when that began.

And I mean, do you kind of, you remember the moment you got the idea at the public library for the book, so do you remember kind of those moments?

- Yeah, yeah.

Some of my earliest memories in life, were sitting on the living room couch in our living room in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where I did grow up, with my mom and my brother, older sister and brother, my younger sister wasn't, hadn't come along yet.

And my mom did what parents are supposed to do.

She read aloud to us, you know, before we could read, she was reading all kinds of books.

She read, you know, "The Bobbsey Twins," and "The Boxcar Children," and the old "Childcraft" series, which is a wonderful collection of stories and poems.

And she read from my collection called "The Childhood of Famous Americans Biography Series."

It's still around, it's written for young people, and it focuses on the childhood of famous Americans.

like Abraham Lincoln.

And one of them was called, "Abe Lincoln Frontier Boy," and I have vivid memories of her reading from that book and others about Lincoln.

And those stories of him splitting logs to make fence rails, and walking through the woods to borrow books, and studying by firelight really grabbed me.

I vividly remember her reading, there's a famous old story about him.

He was a teenager, I guess, living in Southern Indiana, a little frontier summit called Little Pigeon Creek.

And his, this is a true story.

His stepmother, Sally Lincoln had just finished whitewashing the ceiling of the cabin that that they lived in there.

She's very proud of it.

And as she had her back turned, he played a trick on her.

He grabbed a cousin and dipped his feet in mud and flipped him upside down and had him walk across the ceiling, leave muddy footprints across the ceiling.

Luckily for him, his stepmother, I think had a good sense of humor.

She laughed it off.

I think, I'm not sure, I'm sure she made him clean it up.

But I remember my mom reading that story.

So anyway, this kind of stuff grabbed me early on, which just goes to show the books that we expose young people to when they are very young, can have lifelong.

- Lasting impressions, absolutely.

You know, what are some way, some things that life lessons that we can take away from him, you know, for one that such little formal education, that's incredible to me.

- [John] Yeah, less than a year.

- Right.

So you have children.

What are some of those examples, you know, you've compared to Lincoln to maybe teach them some life lessons?

- Yeah.

Well, he is a great study for life lessons of all kinds.

And, you know, I think everybody should have a hero from history, somebody you pick out from the past that you can kind of use as a model and, you know, study their character and their experiences and their words, and kind of use them as a yard stick, if you're looking for it, and he's a great one.

But yeah, he really possessed a basket of virtues that I think made him a great man and a great president.

One of them was his eagerness to learn.

He did have very little formal education, less than one year.

He used to say that his father, Tom Lincoln sent him to school by littles.

He said a little here and a little there, in between plantings and plowings.

And those littles added up to less than one year.

And that took place in a little log cabin, school houses on the Kentucky and Indiana frontiers.

But he loved learning.

He loved to read.

When he was young, he'd say my best friend is a man who can get me a book.

And he would literally walk miles through the Indiana woods to lay his hands on a book if he could.

And he was such an eager learner, and that's one reasons he was a great president.

He was a very eager learner, and he was brilliant at learning on the job.

But there are other things like perseverance.

He was a model of perseverance.

He learned that growing up on the frontier where you either persevered or, you know, you just weren't gonna make it.

And he took that to the White House with him.

And boy, he persevered through probably the toughest four years any presidents ever had.

And when he was president, he would tell people, he said, "I'm like a man trying to keep a tent up in a storm," he would say, "I get it all, you know, "staked down to the ground with the tent stakes.

"And the wind will come around "and blow out one of the tent stakes.

"And I'll grab my hammer, and I'll peg it into the ground."

And he said, "As soon as I get it in, "the wind will blow out another tent stake, "and I'll run around, I'll peg it into the ground.

"And then the wind will blow out another tent stake, "so I'll run around the other side, "and I'll peg it back down."

He said, "That's all I do all day long "is I keep pegging away, pegging away."

And he said, "That's what I mean to keep doing, "pegging away, pegging away."

And that's what he did three, four years.

So he has a model of perseverance.

And, but there are all kinds of life lessons that she can get from studying Abraham Lincoln.

- You know, just like those friends I have who speak in movie quotes all the time.

Are you speaking in Abraham language?

- [John] Oh yeah, he's so much in my head, it's hard not to.

- Yeah, do you have any like favorite standout quotes that you tend to go to?

- Oh, favorite quotes, God.

- [Holly] I know, that probably put you on the spot.

It's like asking somebody their favorite book.

- Yeah, well there, so that is one of my favorites, but he, you know, I was reading one the other day I love, it was a young person that wrote to him and asking him for advice and going through it in the world.

And he wrote back and he said, "Work, work, work is the main thing."

He said, "It takes hard work."

And he was a really hard worker.

So yeah, there's so many Lincoln quotes that it's hard to pick a favorite, I guess.

- And this book is the last five years of his life.

So you had to leave some out, of course, or it would be a whole lot bigger.

How did you pick and choose what stays and what goes, or did you have an editor who helped with that?

- No I pretty much did that myself.

Although, as I said, there was a lot of editing.

I mean, I wrote a lot more than is there, and then threw a lot out.

This is probably the most outlined book I have ever done, and written in my life.

It's my first novel too.

So I think that's kind of ironic because I know some novels, people start writing and they kind of, you know, see where the story takes them.

This one, I really wanted it to be an accurate portrayal of the last five years of Lincoln's life.

So it starts in the spring of 1860 when he was nominated for the presidency, and it takes him through the end of his life.

So I had a beginning point and end point.

And once I settled on that, every chapter, and it's divided into three main parts, and those parts were outlined then, and every chapter of where I started writing that chapter.

I had a good outline knowing, you know, where I wanted to start, and where I wanted to end.

And I wanted, I tried hard to keep each chapter to about 2000 words 'cause I wanted to move along.

And if you look at the top of each chapter, there's a date to kind of help the reader know when this happened.

'Cause almost everything that I write about actually happened in the book.

So because I wanted it to be an accurate portrayal of his life, I really leaned on the research, and meticulously outlined the book as I wrote.

Now, I hope it doesn't read that way, but it doesn't seem so outlined, but that was the process in this particular book.

- I'm always interested to hear authors talk about that research process.

And while it is a lot of fact finding and digging, I imagine you're meeting some friends along the way.

Can you speak to that any?

Have you met some fellow big fans of Lincoln, and formed some friendships through this whole?

- Oh yes, absolutely.

It's funny how many Lincoln fans that are out there.

It's a community.

And I've met them in Spartanburg where I live, and all over the Upstate, and yeah, and around the country.

Of course, people email me about the book.

I'll tell you one story that is kind of interesting.

Last November, I got a phone call, I was on the phone with my cousin, and my cousin, Evelyn, and I kept ignoring the phone call, 'cause it was a 202 area code, which is Washington DC.

And I've lived up there long enough, I knew that was, and I thought it was somebody looking for money, or something.

(Holly laughing) But it kept ringing.

And the fifth time I looked at it, and my memory stirred because I did work in government for about four and a half years, and I realized it was the White House exchange.

And so I said, told my cousin, "I think I better take this."

And the next thing I knew, I was on the phone with Mike Pence, the vice-president, and I don't know Mike Pence, but he said, "John, I had to track you down and tell you," he said, "I'm a huge Lincoln fan.

"And you know, I'm from Indiana where Lincoln grew up."

And he said, "I'm sitting here in my office, "in the White House, and I've got half dozen "Lincoln books on my shelf right here beside me."

And he said, "I've read a lot of Lincoln's books."

He said, "This is the best book about Lincoln "I've ever read."

- [Holly] Wow.

- Which I was, amazing that he took the time to do that.

And we talked for about 10 minutes just about Lincoln.

He just wanted, he wanted to call up and just talk about Lincoln, about his youth, and his faith, and just who he was.

And that's the way people are.

They just get really interested in Abraham Lincoln, and they just, you know, they just want to talk about it.

So it's a great, it's a great way to meet people.

And bond with people.

- You know that story, you should really start that story with the fact that you sent Mike Pence to voicemail four times before you took his call.

(both laughing) That is a great story, I love it.

- Isn't that a wonderful, wonderful story?

- This book has gotten you some national interviews.

I know that you spoke on President's Day, and talking about the cancel culture.

Talk a little bit about that, and whether you see that coming for that day.

- Yeah, well, you know, the cancel culture is out there, and unfortunately Lincoln is in the, you know, the spotlight in some way.

You know, there's some statues about Lincoln that have come down.

And of course I'm not happy about that, since he's my hero.

I tell people, I think we need more statues about Abraham Lincoln, not fewer statues.

This book was, yeah, it ran into a little bit of trouble with Facebook.

The publisher tried to put up some ads, and Facebook turned them down.

And a Washington Post reporter got interested in it, and really followed up the story, and to his credit, really kind of badgered Facebook about it.

And it was the Mike Pence quote that got us, and that they didn't, you know, they, I think they thought it was too, it was political.

When in fact it was just a quote saying, you know, "This is a best book about Lincoln I've read."

But Lincoln, I, you know, we go through these periods every once in a while where people decide, you know, some people out there decide, they don't like Lincoln,.

But he really was a one of the towering great figures of American history.

He, Lincoln led the effort to save our country when it was literally falling apart.

He led the effort to save our founding principles when there were a lot of people that, you know, wanted to cast them aside.

And he helped lead the effort to free millions of enslaved Americans.

So for that alone, you know, I think he deserves to be honored and remembered.

I tell people that you understand the American story a lot better if you understand Lincoln's story.

'Cause in a lot of ways he stands center stage in that great American story.

- Now that the book is out, and you know, you were done with your project, you read so many Lincoln books, now what are you reading?

- Oh, what am I reading?

- [Holly] Mm-hm.

- Well, I am about two thirds of the way through rereading "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens.

It's one of my favorite books, but I haven't read it many years.

So I picked it up and started reading it again.

So it has nothing to do with a Lincoln.

Although I do read, I still read Lincoln stuff all the time.

As a matter of fact, last night here in the hotel in Beaufort, I was reading "The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association," I brought it down with me.

(both laughing) - What does your family think about this?

Are they like, all right, Dad, come on.

- Yeah, they're like, oh there's Dad and Lincoln again.

(Holly laughing) They kinda, you know, it's funny, my two girls who are in college now, they pretty much grew up with this.

- [Holly] Yeah.

- So they're used to it.

(John laughing) They're used to Dad and his Lincoln.

- And his Lincoln stuff.

What do you think is next for you?

- Well, I hope if this book does well enough to write kind of a companion novel, the prequel or the backstory, covering the first part of his life.

It would start as a, when he's a teenager on the Indiana frontier, and take them up through Lincoln-Douglas debates, which is a much longer timeframe.

But I would keep it about the size of this book.

In a lot of ways, it's the most fascinating story part of his life, how he got from a log cabin out, you know, in the middle of nowhere on the frontier to the White House, that long journey is a really, really fascinating journey.

So I'm hoping to do the same thing, write a novel about that.

And I've got a manuscript that just needs massaging, and some reworking, and rewriting and editing as all, as all manuscripts do.

- Now, is that one gonna take over 15 years?

- No, no, no it won't take that long, because it's already written.

Actually I wrote pretty much did the groundwork for it as I was writing this one.

Because my original vision of this book was a giant James Michener size novel kind of covering his whole life.

And not only was that just too unwieldy for me as a first time novelist, but I also discovered when I tried to take that out there to the publishing world that not too many publishers were interested in a James Michener size book, from a first time novelist, which wasn't even finished actually, when I tried to get editors interested in it.

So, that's fortunately they were right about that.

So this is how I ended up with "Old Abe."

- Besides those who do it for their profession, who are your readers?

Who are your first readers, I should say, family, friends.

Do you have certain people who can give you that honest feedback?

- Yeah, I don't have a set group of people, but I do have friends, and my wife, definitely.

As a matter of fact, this book, the epilogue in it is solely due to my wife.

She read the manuscript at one of its stages.

She read it more than once.

And got to the end and said, "You know, you really need to tie up some loose ends."

Because it's told from his standpoint.

And I mean, I'm not giving it away.

I don't think I'm giving away anything when I say that he dies in the end.

I think that most people know that.

- Right, we all know that.

- But because it's told from his standpoint, there were some things I couldn't include in the main story line about the assassination, because he didn't see it coming.

So she said, "Why don't you add an epilogue "kind of sewing up some of those loose ends "and telling what happened right after he died."

And so that's in there because of her feedback.

And it was the feedback of friends who were good writers, and readers who led me to realize I needed to make it a much shorter book than I was originally planning on.

So, that always is a very good thing to do.

Although in the end, I tell people, you know, there are really two people that are the most important that you want to be happy with it.

One is your agent, your literary agent, and the other is an acquisitions editor at a publisher.

You get it past those two people, then you've got a pretty good shot to get out there in the world, yeah.

- Let's talk about the nice book itself.

I was talking about these edges, I just.

And we looked it up, it's called rough cut.

And what was the other name?

- Yeah, rough cut is the term I knew.

And this is the second book I've written that had rough cut, but I'd never heard this before, deckled.

- Deckled, okay.

- [John] Deckled edges, yeah.

- So everybody now has learned something officially on this show.

And then, very nice cover.

And you said, there's a story.

I said, don't tell me until we're on air.

So what was the story of the cover?

- Yeah, it's a great story.

So I had this idea for a cover, which was my original idea was to use the image from the penny on the cover.

And so there are two people who are very responsible.

There are several people responsible for this book.

People who have written books know that it's never just the author that's responsible for the book.

There's a whole team of people that bring it into being.

And one of those people is Kathie Bennett, the publicist for this book, who just would not let me give up on it.

And the other is Marly Rusoff, who is a wonderful literary agent here in Beaufort.

And so after Marly had succeeded in getting Republic Book Publishers to take the book, I was down here in Beaufort, visiting with Marly and told her my idea of a cover.

And she was very sweet and nice about it, and she said, "That's interesting."

But she said, "You know, there's a wonderful artist "named Laura Klynstra, "and I think you should maybe take a look at her work."

And I can't remember Laura, I think she's up in Michigan or Minnesota, some place like that.

I've only talked to her on the phone.

And she took me over to her desk and pulled up on her screen some of Laura's work.

And I immediately said, "Yes."

And so the publisher, Eric Kampmann, who's the editor at the publisher.

I talked to him about it and he said, "That's what you want, that's we're gonna do."

And so he talked to Laura, and Laura came up with, I think, five different ideas.

Just I sent her manuscript, actually, yeah, I sent her a manuscript and a outline of the book.

She came up with five different ideas, and this was one of them.

We changed it very, very little from the idea she sent us.

So, she's a brilliant cover artists.

- It's always interesting to hear how much or how little the author has to say about the cover.

- Yeah, usually a book contract states that the publisher has final say on the cover, because the publisher knows how important that is for book sales.

Now, if you're a huge time author, then you've got more say into it.

And even, you know, this publisher, Republic Books, was very generous.

I mean, Eric said, "If you're not happy with it, "we're not gonna go with it."

So they were extremely accommodating.

- That's great.

Well, time is running out, but there is one question that I really want to ask you because something just tells me that you're gonna have a good answer for this.

I've been asking people this season about a teacher growing up that maybe made a special impact on your life, and maybe your writing career or something like that.

Is there anybody that you can name?

Can you tell us their name and grade, and maybe how they impacted you?

- Yeah, well I had more than one.

So I'd hate to leave anybody out, but I'll zero in on one, just cause it has to do of course, with Abraham Lincoln.

When I was in the fourth grade, I went for much of my school into the Spartanburg Day School in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

And in the fourth grade, my English teacher was named Ann Cheney.

And Mrs. Cheney had everybody in our class, much to our chagrin, I'm sure, we had to memorize the Gettysburg Address.

And we had to stand up at the front of the room.

We each had to take one day a piece, and each student had to stand up and recite the Gettysburg Address.

And those words sank in with me.

They sank in deeply.

And I think, you know, Mrs. Cheney knew the value of that.

So it just goes to show that every once in a while, it's a good idea for people to memorize stuff.

- That's true because especially at that age, you remember it forever.

- It can have a significant impact on your life.

- I agree.

It has been a pleasure.

This has just flown by, and the sign of a good interview is, I never even looked at a question.

So we just kept going and going, and I like it.

So thanks so much for coming by to By the River.

And everybody thank you all for tuning in.

We love having you around.

We're gonna leave you now with a look at our Poet's Corner.

I'm Holly Jackson.

We'll see you next time By the River.

(funky music) - [Ed] Ark, Christmas, 1966.

The small box is filled with little beasts.

A barn that's a barge, a boat.

The ark's ridge sides like boards, a plastic plank and deck that drops in fitted slots, but lifted reveals that zoo of twos.

Heaped beasts to be released beneath the glittering tree, it's dove clipped limbs.

Dad's asleep in his reclining seat, and crumpled waves of paper recede as mom circles the room.

The humming wheel throws light across the walls.

♪ - [Announcer] By the River is brought to you in part by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, Community Foundation of the Lowcountry, strengthening community, Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USCB, the Pat Conroy Literary Center.