New Fordham University Press Title Tells a True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption

"I probably would have been happier living around 1897," said Falls Church, Virginia, author and high school teacher James McGrath Morris.

"Maybe part of the reason I'm writing about the 1890s and 1910 in New York is because I would have preferred to be there then, hanging out on Park Row."

Morris' enthusiasm for, and fascination with, the past served him well during the years he spent researching and writing The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism (Fordham University Press), a biography of early-20th century New York Evening World editor Charles E. Chapin, whose career triumphs were eclipsed by financial ruin and by his killing of his wife; but whose last active decade in prison brought him further celebrity and, many felt, redemption.

In telling Chapin's odd story, Morris opens a window on big-city American life before and during World War I, and on the sensational newspaper-writing that helped to shape it. The Rose Man of Sing Sing, then, is as much a history as a biography. Publishers Weekly hailed it as "captivating," an "impressive achievement" that "will enthrall readers."

"Not bad for a little old high school teacher from the suburbs, heh?" asked an understandably proud Morris.

Now, having brought a vanished era back to vivid life through prose, Morris ("Jamie" to friends) is experiencing a type of chronological shock common to writers who spend a decade or two chronicling the past. He explained that he recently came across a form he filled out for the Columbia University Archive, when he first began digging into the story that became his just-published book. "It read, 'Purpose: A biography of Charles Chapin,'" Morris said. "It was dated: '1986.' All along, in my professional life, I still had to work full-time. So, this project was a little like doing needlepoint for 15 years."

But the writer's interest in Chapin went back even further. Morris, a journalist and author before he became a high school teacher eight years ago at the age of 40, first came across his subject while researching a previous book, Jailhouse Journalism: The Fourth Estate.

"I couldn't turn away from him," Morris recalled of Chapin. "And it became somewhat obsessive. And I've lived with him for 20-some years."

Morris made up his mind then to do a book about Chapin and his world -- a book that would be written in a particular way.

"To put it in the most rudimentary terms," Morris said, "I wanted to apply the tools of a novelist to nonfiction narrative." One of his inspirations was the well-regarded period-fiction work The Alienist by historian-turned-novelist Caleb Carr.

Morris wanted to write a historically accurate work in which the modern writer's voice did not intrude. "You know how you'll be reading some book and it will say, 'Seventy years later, we look at his picture taken then and can see now that …'? It's like a door slamming; it takes you right out of the story. And so I wanted to use only contemporary documents of the time," Morris said.

In quest of such documents and other sources, Morris consulted dozens of archives and traveled to several states. "My [three] children were immensely supportive," he wrote in his book's preface, "and all have learned more than they care to know about Chapin. My son Benjamin was my 'Watson' on trips across Kansas in search of clues about Chapin's days as an actor. My daughter Stephanie completed some last-minute research for me.

My son Alexander always wished me good luck when I descended each night to my study in the cellar."

At the National Archives, Morris discovered a large cache of useful affidavits in the pension file of Chapin's father, a Civil War veteran. An archivist at the Federal Reserve Bank in Cleveland helped Morris find previously unknown material relating to one of Chapin's romantic correspondents. And in Rochester, New York, Morris tracked down the niece of Harry Houdini.

"Houdini and Houdini's widow were friends of Chapin after he was in prison," Morris explained. "Lots of people were.... When I called Houdini's niece and said I was doing a book on Charles Chapin, there was a pause; and this voice came back and said, 'Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time.' And then she began to tell me stories."

Morris worked for years on The Rose Man with the encouragement of an agent but without benefit of publisher. Editors at several houses were initially enthusiastic -- but their votes were overruled by marketing people who felt there was no future in a book about a forgotten figure from the past.

Morris' manuscript at last found a welcoming home at Fordham University Press. "They really wanted the book," said Morris. "So it ended up being an absolutely heaven-bound match." The author is delighted with the design and production of his finished work, which he called "absolutely gorgeous."

At the same time, Morris is alert to "the classic dilemma" of being published by a university press. "I've paid courtesy calls on bookstores in New York, and every store had one or two copies on order -- which is very heartening. But if the [New York] Times were to review it, those books would be gone in one day. Then, when people come in the next day -- you know, very few people respond positively when they hear, 'But we could order it for you.' So it's thrilling; but at the same time, it's worrisome, because ... we don't have the marketing."

Still, Jamie Morris thinks his life has already been changed significantly by The Rose Man of Sing Sing.

"I would have written this if no one wanted to publish it," he said. "I haven't felt that way about everything. I wanted to try to do something in a particular way -- and not only did I get to do it, but I got a publisher who believes in it firmly. And that's really the excitement."

Also exciting for Morris was to win the reading approval of his wife, Patty, to whom the book is dedicated. "She's the one who really prompted me to write it," he said, "irrespective of whether somebody wanted to publish it or not. She really pushed me to get it out of my system....

"But the thrill is, I don't write stuff that she would be interested in, and she read this in galleys while I was away on a trip, and she loved it. Now it sounds silly that your wife loves your book, but she would be honest to say that the other things I've written haven't interested her. So again -- it goes back to the (novelistic) technique that I used. I got her to read a book about a journalist from 100 years ago who murders his wife -- because of the writing. That, to me, is more satisfying than anything else." -- Tom Nolan