THE YEARS-LONG OBSESSION I SHARE WITH RON HOWARD
And the wildest true crime story you’ve (probably) never heard of...
Hello readers, friends, and fellow aficionados of wicked history,
It’s been a minute since my last newsletter. As soon as I finished touring for my debut novel, Where You End (and thanks to everyone who bought the book, came to an event, or spread the word), I got some unexpected news: Ron Howard’s next film, titled “Eden,” was wrapping up filming in Australian. Starring Jude Law, Sydney Sweeney, Ana de Armas, and Vanessa Kirby, the movie tells the same exact story that I tell in my next nonfiction book, Eden Undone: the stranger-than-fiction saga of people who fled Europe in the 1930s to build a utopia on a remote Galápagos island—an ultimately deadly experiment whose mystery still endures.
So my publisher made the decision to crash the book, moving my pub date from May 2025 to September 24, 2024. As in two weeks from today. And crash I did. I drafted and rewrote and edited and copyedited and gathered photographs and compiled seventy pages of citations. In between I paced my tiny apartment listening to my parrot imitate the beeping of the microwave and the garbage truck (two very distinct beeps, as it turns out). But I finished. And I’d be so grateful if you’d consider pre-ordering here or coming to say hello in person (I give a mean slideshow presentation)!
Many of you know the backstory to this story. If you don’t, here’s the short version: Fourteen years ago, while researching an old murder case, I came across a 1941 tabloid passage so fantastic and absurd that I committed it entirely to memory: “Was Dr. Ritter, With His Steel Teeth, Poisoned in Paradise? Was ‘Baroness Eloise,’ Known as ‘Crazy Panties,’ Who Ruled the Island With a Gun and Love, Murdered by One of Her Love Slaves After She Had Driven the Other to His Death? And Why is Frau Ritter Going Back to What She Once Called ‘Hell’s Volcano?’—the Mystery of the Galapagos Island Which Germany Covets, to Be Solved At Last?”
After a feverish few days in the archives, and confirming that “Crazy Panties” more than satisfactorily embodied her nickname, I pivoted from my project at hand: This was the book I should write. Two publishers, however, disagreed. They wanted a book about American history, set in America. Years passed. I wrote other books. But I remained obsessed and, eventually, my persistence (read: begging) paid off. The cast of characters was unlike any I had ever encountered in history, and I’m excited to tell you more about them, and about their Hollywood counterparts. As you’ll see, they all got a very substantial glow-up.
It was the strangest of times—Adolf Hitler on the rise, Wall Street teetering toward collapse—and Dr. Friedrich Ritter was the strangest of men. He worked at a Berlin hospital and spoke to his patients about the power of thought. He did not trust anything civilization had to offer, and had long been desperate to flee it. Floreana, a lava-encrusted, uninhabited island in the southern part of the archipelago, fit his dream of a dark Nietzschean escape (he was obsessed with the philosopher). Friedrich was so committed to island life that, before setting sail, he extracted all of his teeth and replaced them with steel dentures. In a sign of adversities to come, he neglected to account for the shrinkage of gums, and the teeth would not stay in. This guy was an egomaniacal hypocrite of the highest order and an immensely fun villain.
Dore was twenty-six years old and suffering from multiple sclerosis when she met Friedrich Ritter at his hospital. Dore’s condition was incurable, other doctors said. But Friedrich told her she was “choosing” to be ill and could heal herself if she put her mind to it. Mansplaining aside, Dore was intrigued by this strange, savage looking man; he was much more interesting than her husband, whom she considered old and boring and bad in bed. She convinced Friedrich to let her accompany him to the Galápagos. She believed it was her duty in life to support his work and spread his ideas throughout the world. When she began suffering dental problems, she and Friedrich shared his set of steel dentures (is there a grosser phrase in the English language than “shared steel dentures”)? But Friedrich could also be bossy and cruel, and Dore fought the urge to rebel. I sometimes wanted to reach back through time and give Dore a pep talk, but I think she ultimately redeemed herself.
Margret and her older fiancé, Heinz Wittmer (played by Daniel Brühl), fled Germany and arrived on Floreana in July 1932—much to Dore and Friedrich’s annoyance. Margret was five months pregnant, and the last thing Friedrich wanted to do was deliver a baby; he was much too busy pretending to be a vegetarian and begging American tourists for gifts. And Dore thought she was an “idiot” for deciding to give birth on a remote island. Sydney Sweeney is playing against type here; the only one paying any attention to Margret’s breasts was her nursing baby. The two households settled into an uneasy peace—until the arrival of another group of exiles transformed the situation into an adult Lord of the Flies. Margret was a keen observer and a terrific gossip, and always knew more than she let on.
In October 1932, the 39-year-old Baroness Antonia Wagner von Wehrborn Bosquet (a character born for me to write about!) and her two younger lovers, Rudolph Lorenz and Robert Philippson, pitched up on the island. The Baroness, an authentic aristocrat by way of her grandfather, was Viennese by birth but had lived most recently in Paris, where she left behind a husband and a bankrupt lingerie shop. Disturbing rumors swirled about her—some of which she’d embellished or outright invented—including that she had fled the City of Light after committing murder. The Baroness immediately pissed everyone off by announcing her plan to build a Miami-style resort on Floreana. She insulted Heinz and Margret by washing her feet in their drinking water, mortified Dore by talking openly about sex, and scandalized everyone by attempted to seduce every man she encountered—including Friedrich and Heinz. One tourist called her hotel, the “Hacienda Paradiso,” a “festering sex complex.” Apparently there’s a ménage à trois scene in the movie. I couldn’t find concrete evidence of any steamy threesomes in the archives, but I have little doubt they were a fairly regular occurrence. The Baroness was brash and brazen and weirdly feminist and terrifying and terrible, and I loved everything about her.
No word yet when the movie will hit theaters, but I hope you’ll be persuaded to read the book before you watch. The truth is much stranger than the fiction.
Thanks, as always, for your support. Watch this space for giveaways and news, and I hope to see you on the road…
Abbott
Great to discover you through Joe Pompeo! On way to buy your book...
Omg this is FASCINATING! I can't wait to read it!