What One Writer's Wrought

As a new resident of Austin, I was excited to volunteer for my first Texas Book Festival. In an article I wrote last month about the festival, I'd described my role as an author's guide, and how I'd had the good fortune to meet a number of very interesting people, one of whom was best-selling author, journalist and private eye Rene Denfeld. Denfeld had made a strong impression on me of someone with integrity, and with a huge measure of compassion for all of her fellow humans, not just the ones lucky enough to be born in her own country (the United States). What little she divulged of her personal life during the 45 minutes I heard her speak was enough to make me an instant fan, and soon after went looking for what books of hers I might find on the shelves of Austin's new downtown library.• The first one I was able to get my hands on was her "novel" published by Harper Collins in 2017, The Child Finder . I put quotes around the word novel because from th

I had returned to the east coast in July of this year to watch a high-school buddy wrestle in an amateur tournament on the beautiful white sandy beaches near Point Pleasant, New Jersey. We re-connected with my sister and another classmate / good buddy, on that beach, that day. Then, prior to returning to my new home in Austin, I went to visit my niece and her partner, who the year before had moved into a new house in Caytonsville, Maryland. I'd heard long ago of Benjamin Banneker: this legendary, 18th-century, African-American man, but had mostly forgotten about him until this recent visit to my niece's place, situated in the immediate vicinity where Banneker was born and spent most of his life. Born free in 1731 in Ellicott's Mills (opposite what would become Ellicott City) to Mary (a free woman), and Robert Bannaky (a freed slave from Guinea), he would become a consummate autodidact : almost entirely self-educated. His neighbor, George Ellicott, whose family had buil