Frances Dinkelspiel is a fifth-generation Californian who spent more than 20 years in the newspaper business, writing for publications including the New York Times, People Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle before publishing her first book. Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California – which was eight years in the making and is just out – has been praised by San Francisco Magazine for its “elegantly restrained prose.” Do enjoy Frances’ wonderful description of how she got there, and then go right out and pick up a copy of this wonderful book. This one would make a great holiday gift, too! – Meg
I had been a newspaper reporter for more than 15 years before I even wanted to write a book. For me, the thrill was in the chase. I loved getting up everyday, going to work, figuring out the story I wanted to write, and tracking down the details. I prided myself on always making that last phone call, on chasing reluctant subjects, on combing through dusty documents to uncover the real truth behind a shady business deal or back-room government contract. And after all that work – Voila! – Just a day later my name would grace the top of an article. It was instant gratification.
But then the excitement began to fade. I was living in Berkeley, CA and working out of a one-person office in Oakland that the newspaper was always threatening to close. Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, had decided to run for mayor of Oakland, so for weeks and weeks all I wrote about was Jerry Brown. It grew tiresome. Suddenly I developed a desire to spend more than one day or a few days on an article. I wanted to know a subject in depth. I wanted to stretch my writing skills. In short, I wanted to write a book.
And I had no idea how to go about it.
I took a leave of absence from the San Jose Mercury News and decided to focus on writing personal essays. Since I had lived a fairly normal life until then, I thought I would enrich my essays by including details about my family, which had been living in California since the 1850s. I knew there were some old family papers at the California Historical Society in San Francisco, and I went there to look at them. When I asked the archivist for the papers of Isaias Hellman (my great-great grandfather) she said, “Which box?” It turned out there were more than 40 boxes with 50,000 pages of archival documents on Hellman.
I started to look through the documents and quickly abandoned any notion of writing more essays about myself. This Hellman guy was much more interesting! He had come to California in 1859 and settled in Los Angeles when it was more Mexican pueblo than American city and started or served as president of so many banks, including Wells Fargo, that he was dubbed the richest Jew in the West.
He helped start the University of Southern California, funded transportation, water, and electricity projects up and down the state and controlled California’s wine industry for almost 20 years. He was a Zelig-like character. If you looked closely at many of the major industries in California, you would find Isaias Hellman.
I quickly realized I had stumbled upon a wonderful untold story about the rise of Hellman and the critical role he played in the development of the West. And there is nothing that reporters like more than untold stories.
There was no straight line from the revelation I had that day at the historical society to the publication
of Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California. In fact, there were a series of delays, setbacks, and frustrations as well as triumphs. The entire process took 8 years.
For about three years I was in something many non-fiction writers know as research rapture. That’s the state of mind where no arcane newspaper article, no old book, no decaying manuscript, is too obscure to spend days tracking down. Since I didn’t know anything about Hellman’s life before I started working on the project, I had to learn everything I could. I read dozens of books about the settlement of the West. I spent weeks in the basement of the UC Berkeley library reading old newspaper and going through the letters and documents at the historical society. I visited libraries around the country to track down material, including the Bancroft Library, the Huntington Library, the Western Jewish History Center of the Judah L Magnes Museum, as well as the New York Public Library. I even went to his birthplace in Reckendorf, a small town in the German state of Bavaria.
All this research was great, but obscured the fact that I was avoiding writing. Part of me was still unsure whether I had a legitimate book or a vanity project. One day my cousin called me up and suggested we both apply to the non-fiction writing program at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.
I had never even considered the idea, but I realized it would jump-start my writing process. I set out to write 20 pages, but soon found myself mired in my old newspaper writing habits. I was stuck in an inverted pyramid mode where I frontloaded all the most critical information at the top of an article.
I had no idea how to write scenes or build narrative tension or create characters. I had to study books and rely on the feedback from the women in my writing group, North 24th, to muddle through. And one of the tensions in writing historical narrative is that you can’t make up information. You have to examine primary documents and draw details from them to create vivid portraits of people and places.
When I went to write a scene where someone shoots at Hellman in San Francisco in 1895, for example, I studied pictures of the streets around his home, read old newspaper and studied telegrams and letters written about the incident. Then I wove those pieces together for my prologue.
I went to Squaw in the summer of 2003 and things happened quickly after that. The head of the non-fiction section, a New York agent named Michael Carlisle, really liked my work and encouraged me to keep in touch. He also suggested that I write a complete first draft of the book before getting back to him because he thought I still had a lot to figure out. So for a year I wrote furiously. I went to see him in New York in 2004. He was in the process of moving agencies and it took him six excruciating months to take me on as a client.
He starting sending the manuscript out in early January 2005 and the rejections were nerve-wracking. I felt like I was living in perpetual limbo. Most of the editors who turned down the book were complimentary in their rejections, so I had hope. Finally, St. Martins Press bought the book in March 2005. I had fantasies of turning in the completed manuscript in March 2006. But I had lots more work to do and I did not finish a decent draft until January 2007. By that time my acquiring editor had left St. Martins (I was orphaned! Every writer’s nightmare). My new editor was so busy that he kept the manuscript on his desk for almost nine months. Then it took more than a year for the book to be published.
The journey from idea to book has been long, but I have learned a lot on the way. The most important trait to have as a write, I believe, is perseverance. – Frances
