Rosalyn Rossignol and Louisa Deasey both have crafted memoirs that explore mysteries to which they have personal connections. They each had to travel geographically and through time in order to unravel the clues that ultimately led to profound personal discoveries and to the truth about the people they cared for very much. 

Louisa Interviews Rosalyn

Louisa Deasey: What was your writing process for My Ghost Has A Name: Memoir of a Murder?

Rosalyn Rossignol: Finding out and then speaking the truth about things that have been hidden away or simply remain undisclosed has always been a passion of mine.  I think that explains why I became obsessed with a desire to discover the truth about how and why my high school friend Nell Crowley Davis was murdered when she was 37 years old.

So that is how the process of writing this book began, as an obsession that led to a process of discovery. I did not, however, at the beginning, realize that I would be writing a book about this process; I just desperately wanted to know what had happened that would lead a 16-year-old girl to murder her mother, or if that 16-year-old girl was even part of the plan that led to the murder, because there was conflicting evidence and testimony. Since I was not living in South Carolina, where the murder took place, I planned a first trip during which I would get a feel for the place, read the police files on the case, and interview as many people as possible. It was also necessary for me to try to get the three young people who had been charged with the crime to talk to me. Since they were all in prison– the two young men on murder and armed robbery convictions and the daughter on an armed robbery conviction– I had no other recourse but to write to them.  Initially, Sarah Nickel, the daughter, was the only one who wrote back. What ensued was a relationship that spanned two decades.  I eventually was contacted by her co-defendants, one after I was about a year into the process and the other not until I had found a publisher.

Due to a discovery process that lasted a little over 10 years and continued to turn up new information, the manuscript underwent many, many revisions.  When these discoveries occasionally required me to radically change my assessment of the crime, I had to radically change the trajectory of the book.  And, the biggest change of all came when I was already in the midst of incorporating revisions suggested by my publisher!

LD: What compelled you to write this story as a book-length work? What were your feelings in the initial stage of the project? 

RR: As I mentioned before, I was compelled to write the book by my desire to find out the truth—in this case, how and why my best friend throughout junior high and high school was murdered. My feelings in the initial stages were mainly excitement (over the prospect of solving a mystery) and trepidation. I went into this knowing I was going to be dissecting the reasons for a terribly brutal crime. My old friend had been choked, bashed in the head with a baseball bat, and stabbed so many times it was impossible for the medical examiner to say how many because some of the wounds merged. The fear was so intense at times that I could not sleep, and when I did sleep, often had terrible nightmares.  One time I dreamed I was a teenager again, visiting Nell at her parents’ house, and when they showed me the bed I was to sleep in, it was a compost bin just like the one in which my friend’s body had been found.

LD: How long did it take you to work on this?

RR: I started learning about the crime shortly after it happened in fall of 1999, but the entire process of research, writing, revision (three stages, repeated multiple times) took about 10 years, mostly because of the time it took to develop relationships with important principals, and time required to get copies of many legal documents such as trial transcripts, appeal briefs, etc. Ironically, ten years is also how long it also took me to find out the truth about what happened. In fact, I did not really get to the bottom of the mystery until the book was in its final set of revisions suggested by the publisher!

LD: What was the most difficult part of the writing process? I’d imagine the topic would have been pretty heartbreaking to bury your head in for so long. 

RR: Many things having to do with the writing of this book were difficult, but the emotional strain of dealing with the information I was uncovering was probably the most challenging.  I was in therapy throughout the process, and I’m not sure I would have been able to complete it without that kind of support, as well as the strong support of my husband.

LD: What was the most fulfilling part of the writing / publishing process? 

It is difficult to choose one thing as being “most fulfilling.”  Here’s a list of things that were very fulfilling:

• Finding out the truth about what happened
• Developing relationships with all of the people I met who helped me research the book, especially the three who are presently serving 30-year prison sentences: Sarah Grace Nickel, John Ridgway and Kevin Bergin.
• Seeing the book finally in print
• Receiving a great deal of positive feedback from people who have read the book

If I had to choose one, I would say it was the positive response to the book. I have dreamed, ever since I was a child, of writing something that would really reach people in a profound way, and many of the responses I have been getting suggest that I have.

Rosalyn interviews Louisa

Rosalyn Rossignol: Part of what makes this this memoir, A Letter from Paris, attractive to readers is the many revelations of things you didn’t know about your father. You obviously didn’t know these things when you started, so what was it that made you begin this investigation of your father’s life?

Louisa Deasey: The investigation began with a sort of bomb going off in my life at age 38. I know that’s a strange analogy but it’s how it felt. I received a Facebook message from a woman in Paris about my father. He had been gone for almost 32 years. I’d not thought about him nor spoken of him for years – decades even, because I thought it was pointless. No one who could tell me about him was still alive, so why bother? Also, wasn’t he a failure? That’s the story I’d always assumed.

But this French family on the other side of the world had a mass of material about him, stories to tell, and a vision of him that was almost like a completely different character to the man I’d always thought my father to have been. I couldn’t not pursue this story. It’s very primal, we need to know where we come from, really! And, as much as we hate to admit it, our parents’ stories are also partially ours, too. I’d always known my mum, but dad was this huge blank space in my life. He’d died when I was six. So in some ways, that ‘bomb’ was like a gift being offered to me. But only if I was strong enough to accept it, and follow it down all the rabbit holes it would inevitably lead me down.

RR: Describe the kinds of research you had to do to uncover your father’s hidden life.

LD: Oh, where do I begin?! It was monumental. I worked my way through 1.6 meters of boxes in the library (his papers, manuscripts and handwritten diaries), I worked my way through another eleven library collections across the world. I scanned photos and sent them to strangers to decipher who the people were. I rang and emailed strangers who may or may not have known someone vaguely connected to my dad. I visited the national archives and explored his siblings’ war records. I consulted with war historians to translate some of the records for context. I read every book about the Modern Art period in Melbourne at the time and about the post-war push to Europe. I emailed dozens of strangers. I consulted art dealers and spent many nights Googling paintings and other things until two in the morning. I read every book that referred to my dad (I found over a dozen after commencing the research), and I travelled to France and London to meet the French family and the art dealer who owned the Villa where my dad had lived in the 1940s. Oh, and I had a lot of deep and sometimes painful conversations and email correspondences with my relatives about what they remembered and what information we still had.

RR: What was the most difficult part of the writing process?

LD: Knowing where to start! Dad’s life was a sprawling mass of connections that spanned continents and historical eras I couldn’t fully comprehend, having grown up in a completely different time. I think the hardest part for me, was that with most writing projects you can break things down into bite-sized pieces. But, with the research into my dad’s life, every time I found a new piece of information, it would lead to another library collection (sometimes in another country) or three books I’d have to read, or history of a period of time in Australia or France or the war. It was such a web. I had to decide what to prioritize or I couldn’t have done it in less than 20 years!

The background knowledge I had to have just to make sense of the context in which he was living was very difficult. I found it really hard to fathom how conservative Australia was when he was growing up, which infiltrated everything about his story. It was also very painful asking relatives to share what they remembered of him, because it brought that feeling of grief back. There was this sort of jealousy, I suppose, the more I found out about my dad, that others had spent so much more time with this man, than me! He sounded incredible. And I had never known him.

So there was the research part, and the grief part. Both were very, very difficult and painful.

RR: What was the most fulfilling part of the process?

LD: Finally knowing what dad did, and who he was! When I got to France and understood, finally, what I’d been doing for over a year in tomb-cold library reading rooms had been for something beautiful. I felt close to my dad, like I’d reclaimed him into my life. I transformed that grief into something beautiful. Now I know my dad. I could never say that before I wrote this book– I couldn’t even admit to the fact that I wished I knew him. I know him, and I like him. And I know what I inherited from him, and that it was something good, too. That’s incredibly profound and healing!

Main photo courtesy of: Sue Rickhuss

Photo of question marks courtesy of: Arek Socha

Photo of The Seine courtesy of: Leonard Cotte

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Rosalyn Rossignol lives on the U.S. Virgin Island of St. Thomas where she currently writes fiction, creative non-fiction and, occasionally, poetry.   Since her early retirement from teaching at the University of the Virgin Islands, she has been expanding her creativity to include the visual arts and enjoys building encaustic collages using images and text.  Her most recent publication is a non-fiction piece entitled, “The Widow’s Child” in the Baltimore Review.  The ABC news program 20/20 is in production of an episode covering Nell Davis’s murder and Rossignol will be interviewed for the show, which is scheduled to air in the Spring of 2019. To learn more about her work, please visit: rosalynrossignol.com

Louisa Deasey is an Australian writer who has published non-fiction widely, including Overland, Vogue, The Australian, and The Saturday Age. Her first memoir, Love and Other U-Turns, was nominated for the Nita B. Kibble Award for women writers. A Letter From Paris is about uncovering her late father’s life in post-war France. She blogs about memoir writing at louisadeasey.com Follow Louisa on Facebook and Instagram: @louisadeaseyauthor and on Twitter: @louisadeasey