Vollers, Maryanne 1955–

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Vollers, Maryanne 1955–

PERSONAL:

Born December 18, 1955, in Mount Kisco, NY; daughter of Joseph E. (a fire department chief) and Josephine E. (a court clerk) Vollers; married William F. Campbell (a photographer), March 3, 1984. Education: Brown University, A.B., 1977.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Livingston, MT. Agent—Kristine Dahl, International Creative Management, 40 W. 57th St., 17th Fl., New York, NY 10019.

CAREER:

Rolling Stone, New York, NY, associate editor, 1977-82; freelance journalist and author, 1982—; National Broadcasting Company, Inc. (NBC) News, field producer based in Nairobi, Kenya, and Johannesburg, South Africa, 1986-89.

MEMBER:

PEN American Center.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Book Award nomination, 1995, for Ghosts of Mississippi.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1995.

(With Jerri Neilsen) Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole, Talk Miramax Books/Hyperion (New York, NY), 2001.

Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph: Murder, Myth, and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Time, Esquire, Audubon, Sports Illustrated, GQ, and Harper's Bazaar.

ADAPTATIONS:

Ghosts of Mississippi was adapted for film by Columbia Pictures and Castle Rock Entertainment and directed by Rob Reiner, 1996. Ice Bound was adapted as a sound recording (unabridged; eight cassettes), read by the author, Brilliance, 2001, and was made into a television movie by Miramax Television and directed by Roger Spottiswoode, 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Journalist Maryanne Vollers's first book, Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South, is a history of the saga that began on June 12, 1963, when white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith ended the life of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi field secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Twenty years passed between De La Beckwith's two mistrials and his final trial in 1994. Vollers provides background on Evers and De La Beckwith and the racial climate of the time. She then recounts the trials that resulted in hung juries and the subsequent evolution of politics, press coverage, and black participation that led to the third trial. A Publishers Weekly contributor called the book "a worthwhile account," while Booklist reviewer Lillian Lewis called Voller's examination of racism and civil rights "superb."

The book was adapted for film by director Rob Reiner, with the part of De La Beckwith played by James Woods. Alec Baldwin played Assistant District Attorney Bobby DeLaughter, a young lawyer who risks his family's support and safety while seeking justice. Whoopi Goldberg played Myrlie Evers, the widow of Medgar, who subsequently became board president of the NAACP in 1995.

Vollers once told CA: "In 1991, Esquire assigned me to write an article about the reopening of the Medgar Evers murder case. After the publication of the article, I spent three years researching the thirty-year-old civil rights slaying. It was a journey into the dark heart of the old South, a search for answers along the back roads of the Mississippi Delta, in the secret, sealed files of Mississippi's spy agency and, eventually, within the jail cell of the white-supremacist assassin. The result was my book Ghosts of Mississippi."

Vollers wrote Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole with Jerri Nielsen, a doctor who, while serving as a physician with a team working at the South Pole, found a lump in her own breast, diagnosed it as cancer, and treated herself, prior to her rescue. School Library Journal reviewer Jane S. Drabkin called the book "a story of growth, endurance, teamwork, and survival."

The authors document the extreme cold, the months of darkness, the wind, the thin air, and the overall effect of conditions on the people at the station, which was closed to all travel just two weeks before Nielsen first became ill. When she discovered the cancer, Nielsen communicated with oncologist Kathy Miller, who kept in touch via e-mail and instructed Nielsen and other members of her party on the biopsy procedure. Chemotherapy drugs were dropped, but Neilsen, fearful and wracked with pain, despaired of surviving. She was finally rescued when an Air National Guard plane risked landing briefly to pick her up. Katherine Bouton wrote in the New York Times Book Review that Ice Bound "takes its place among the great Antarctic adventure stories." A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt the work was not "a memoir about illness; instead, this excellent book is about life, work, and the depth of human resiliency and love."

The subject of Vollers' 2006 book, Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph: Murder, Myth, and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw, was the man behind the infamous bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia, that left a woman dead and several injured, as well as bombings at two abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, which also resulted in death and several critical injuries. After being supplied with the license plate information of a suspicious man following the final attack, investigators on the case were able to finally track down and capture Rudolph who had been hiding in the mountains of rural North Carolina for the last five years, living off scraps from restaurants and grocery store dumpsters in the area. After a plea bargain, he was sentenced to life in prison at the Administrative Maximum United States Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado—home to many other high-profile criminals such as the Unabomber.

In an interview with Publishers Weekly reviewer Sara Nelson, Vollers expressed that she never expected to get cooperation from Rudolph for the story. However, much to her surprise, after Rudolph pled guilty he started to write to her from jail, and he eventually relinquished his right to have his attorneys' files remain privileged. "Everybody was talking to me: the lawyers, the U.S. attorney, everybody," exclaimed Vollers. New York Times Book Review critic Janet Maslin mentioned that Vollers' communications with Rudolph "could easily have been parlayed into melodrama." However, the book "does not exploit this access to a stellar criminal. Instead it offers a cool, gripping investigation of the bomber's mind, methods and stereotype-busting traits. It also carefully tracks the missteps that brought him down," added Maslin. A Books 'n' Bytes Web site reviewer praised Lone Wolf, calling it an "engrossing read, like the best true crime stories." A Publishers Weekly critic also commended the book: "There are plenty of surprises and conundrums in this breathtaking and deeply disturbing attempt to answer the elusive question, ‘Who is Eric Rudolph?’" According to Maslin, "a standout in the true crime genre, Ms. Vollers's book is consistently astute. ‘A homemade bomb is more than a weapon,’ she writes at the outset. ‘It is a statement.’ She devotes her book to deciphering Mr. Rudolph's statement as keenly as she can."

When asked in her interview with Nelson what the connection between all the subjects she chooses for her books was, Vollers replied: "my subject matter … is the heroes and villains in American history. When I was fourteen my brother committed suicide … I think that has something to do with my career, which has been an exploration of the inexplicable."

Vollers once told CA: "I began my career at Rolling Stone where, in the late 1970s, I worked as a writer, editor, and chief of research. In 1982 I left New York to live in Kenya. There I worked as a freelance field producer for NBC News, a stringer for Time, and a freelance radio correspondent and magazine writer. I covered the famine in Ethiopia, rhino poaching in Zimbabwe, Texans on safari, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and the war in Uganda.

"I met my husband, photojournalist William Campbell, while in Africa. We were married under an olive tree in a Kenyan game park. We returned to America in 1989, settled in the Blue Ridge foothills, and continued to work in journalism."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 1, 1995, Lillian Lewis, review of Ghosts of Mississippi: The Murder of Medgar Evers, the Trials of Byron De La Beckwith, and the Haunting of the New South, p. 1364.

Boston College Third World Law Journal, spring, 1996, Todd Taylor, review of Ghosts of Mississippi, pp. 359-379.

Daily Variety, April 17, 2003, review of Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole, p. 8.

Entertainment Weekly, February 23, 2001, Gillian Flynn, "The Week," p. 156.

IRE Journal, July-August, 1997, Stacy A. Teicher, review of Ghosts of Mississippi, p. 6.

Journal of Southern History, November, 1996, review of Ghosts of Mississippi, p. 840.

Kansas City Star, June 8, 2003, review of Ice Bound.

Library Journal, April 1, 1995, Thomas J. Davis, review of Ghosts of Mississippi, p. 111; June 1, 2000, Gloria Maxwell, review of Ice Bound, p. 250; April 1, 2001, Stephanie Papa, review of Ice Bound, p. 122.

Nature Medicine, April, 2001, Karen Antman, review of Ice Bound, p. 401.

New York Times Book Review, January 20, 2002, Katherine Bouton, review of Ice Bound, p. 20; November 9, 2006, Janet Maslin, review of Lone Wolf: Eric Rudolph: Murder, Myth, and the Pursuit of an American Outlaw.

People, April 17, 1995, Mark Bautz, review of Ghosts of Mississippi, p. 41.

Publishers Weekly, February 6, 1995, review of Ghosts of Mississippi, p. 70; January 8, 2001, review of Ice Bound, p. 64; June 30, 2003, "Ghost Writes about Rudolph," p. 12; September 25, 2006, review of Lone Wolf, p. 55; September 25, 2006, Sara Nelson, "PW Talks with Maryanne Vollers: Probing a Heart of Darkness," p. 54.

School Library Journal, May, 2001, Jane S. Drabkin, review of Ice Bound, p. 178.