Join us on March 26th for an exciting interview of Abbott Kahler (formerly known as Karen Abbott*) who writes both fiction and nonfiction. Her earlier nonfiction works include Ghosts of Eden Park, Liar Temptress Soldier Spy, American Rose, and Sin in the Second City.
About Eden Undone
A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II
At the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul George Allan Hancock and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on the shore of a remote Galápagos island. For the past four years Hancock and other American elites had traveled the South Seas to collect specimens for scientific research. On one trip to the Galápagos, Hancock was surprised to discover an equally exotic group of humans: European exiles who had fled political and economic unrest, hoping to create a utopian paradise. One was so devoted to a life of isolation that he’d had his teeth extracted and replaced with a set of steel dentures.
As Hancock and his fellow American explorers would witness, paradise had turned into chaos. The three sets of exiles—a Berlin doctor and his lover, a traumatized World War I veteran and his young family, and an Austrian Baroness with two adoring paramours—were riven by conflict. Petty slights led to angry confrontations. The Baroness, wielding a riding crop and pearl-handled revolver, staged physical fights between her two lovers and unabashedly seduced American tourists.
The conclusion was deadly: with two exiles missing and two others dead, the survivors hurled accusations of murder.
Using never-before-published archives, Abbott Kahler weaves a chilling, stranger-than-fiction tale worthy of Agatha Christie. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to World War II, with a mystery as alluring and curious as the Galápagos itself, Eden Undone explores the universal and timeless desire to seek utopia—and lays bare the human fallibility that, inevitably, renders such a quest doomed.
About Abbott Kahler
Abbott Kahler (formerly Karen Abbott) is the author of four New York Times bestselling works of narrative nonfiction. A search for an ancestor who went missing in 1905 led her to write Sin in the Second City, which tells the true story of two sisters who ran the world’s most famous brothel and the nationwide battle to shut them down. Her interest in Gypsy Rose Lee, the subject of American Rose, stems from stories her grandmother shared about Rose from the1930s and 40s. Liar Temptress Soldier Spy was inspired by a six-year stint in Atlanta, where the ghosts of the Civil War still seem omnipresent. The HBO show Boardwalk Empire introduced her to bootlegger George Remus, the subject of The Ghosts of Eden Park and a character much more fascinating than Al Capone.
She was nearing the end of a draft for Eden Undone when she learned that the legendary Ron Howard was directing a movie on the very same subject. Titled EDEN, Howard’s movie—starring Sydney Sweeney as Margret Wittmer, Jude Law as Friedrich Ritter, and Ana de Armas as the Baroness—will premiere at the Venice Film Festival in early September.
Abbott’s books have featured as Indie Next picks, Amazon’s best books of the year, Library Journal’s best books of the year, and Smithsonian Magazine’s best history books of the year. She has also been a finalist for the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime, the Goodreads book award for history, and the Ohioana Book Awards, the second oldest state literary prize in the country.
She has written for newyorker.com, New York Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications, and has appeared on the History Channel, CBS Sunday Morning, AMC’s "Making of the Mob,” the Discovery Channel, and other media outlets. Her books have been optioned for television and film, and her podcast about George Remus, REMUS: THE MAD BOOTLEG KING, is forthcoming from iHeartRadio.
Abbott is a native of Philadelphia, where she spent six years as a journalist, covering crime, advocating for abused women, and hanging out with mafia bosses and baseball wives. She lives in New York City and in Greenport, New York, where she’s convinced her little bungalow is haunted. She appreciates a good poker hand, an old bottle of wine, and the never-ending hunt for new stories to tell.
*Read the strange story behind her name change here. You can follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, or sign up for her (monthly or so) Wicked History newsletter. click here for her website
Author Talk Specifics
When: 3/26/25 at 6:30pm, refreshments + book signings at 7:30pm
Where: Union Church Connection Room
485 Columbus Ave
Books for sale by Parkside Books
Free to All. Come in person or attend virtually via Zoom
TO CONNECT VIA ZOOM:
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