Sybilla Pomeroy Avery Cook, 1930-2019

This is the long version of an obituary prepared by Billy's two older sons, Hal and Bob.

Sybilla Pomeroy Avery Cook, known by many as “Billy,” longtime resident of Long Grove, IL, Roseburg, OR and most recently the Mirabella Portland died at her home there early Sunday, October 27, 2019. She was 89 years old. 

An avid lover of books, a writer and advocate for libraries, she was born August 20, 1930 at Buffalo, NY, the eldest child of Edward Carrington Avery and Elizabeth Amelia Boorum of Auburn. She was just 5 years old and her younger brother Charles Carrington not yet 3 when their mother died. Her father remarried Jean Louden Drummond, who later gave birth to her half-brother, Robert Davies Avery. Both brothers predeceased her. 

Following elementary education in Auburn, in 1944 Sybilla entered Mary C. Wheeler School in Providence, R.I., then a girl’s boarding school, graduating in 1948. She went on to attend Smith College, but in 1949 left for Northwestern University, in Evanston, IL, where she completed her baccalaureate degree in English literature and Education in 1951. There she and fellow student, John D. Cook became engaged, marrying in Auburn, NY on June 12, 1951. They lived and worked in the northern Chicagoland suburbs for some 25 years where they raised their family of three boys (Harold, 1952; Robert, 1954; Raymond, 1957). 

As her children grew, Billy returned to teaching, first as an aid, then as a substitute teacher. In 1966 she enrolled in Rosary College (now Dominican University, River Forest, IL), where she completed her master’s degree in Library Science in 1968 and worked until 1976 as Library Media Specialist in River Forest and Des Plaines, IL. 

Long-time residents of Long Grove, IL, she and John moved in 1976 to Roseburg, Oregon, where Billy was Library Media Specialist for the Winston-Dillard and later Glide schools. After further formal studies she earned her M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Oregon in 1982. In 1984 she was honored to be named both Glide Teacher of the Year and Oregon Elementary Library Media Teacher of the Year. In 1986 her Instructional Design for Libraries: An Annotated Bibliography was published. 

Retiring from full-time work in 1990, she did consulting for the Umpqua, Ash Valley, and Elkton School Districts in Douglas County until 1996. From 1988 to 1994 she also served as an Adjunct Library Science Instructor at Western Oregon State University. With Cheryl Page she published Books, Battles, And Bees: A Reader’s Competition Resource For Intermediate Grades in 1994. An active member of the Douglas County Friends of the Library, she received their Gandalf Award that same year.

In retirement, Billy devoted herself to writing. She published a guide to exploring Portland (Walking Portland, 1998; new edition 2013), and together with co-authors, two other books to encourage student reading (Battle of The Books and More, 2001 and 2004). She also wrote numerous articles and book reviews for magazines, professional journals, and newspapers. 

After being widowed on July 7, 2007, her main authorial efforts led to her book: Drawn Together in Art, Love, and Friendships; The Biography of Caldecott Award-winning Authors Berta and Elmer Hader (Concordia University Publishing, 2016). She was presented the Oregon Library Association Children’s Services Division’s Evelyn Sibley Lapman Award 2016 “For significant contributions in library service for the benefit of the children of Oregon.”

Over the years Billy developed a large network of friends, and participated in many organizations including the Association of Writers, the Oregon Educational Media Association, the Oregon branch of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the Episcopal Church Women and the American Association of University Women. 

She moved from Roseburg to the Mirabella Portland, OR in November, 2010 to live closer to family and was very happy when a granddaughter later moved to a condo viewable from and within easy walking distance of the Mirabella. Leaving her home of many years in Roseburg was difficult, but she soon found that she loved living in her new apartment near the heart of the city. She enjoyed riding the streetcar, was entranced when the sun illuminated her view of Mt. St. Helens and enjoyed seeing the boats, bridges and cityscapes along the Willamette River, the building and launching of barges, the summer fireworks, the Christmas flotilla and many other activities all just outside her windows and deck. She expanded her Scrabble playing online or in person, and actively participated in numerous resident committees, writing associations and organizations while remaining politically and socially active with various groups and organizations. She especially loved meeting and socializing with the many new and interesting people she met continually enlarging her web of friends at the many dinners, parties and events she enjoyed. She frequently expressed amazed gratitude as to how her life, her circumstances and her family had all turned out.

She is survived by her three sons: Harold of Providence, RI, Robert of Portland, OR, and Ray Cook of West Newberry, MA, and their wives Faye Getz, Carolyn Stevens, and Marcia Sellos-Mora, grandchildren Avery Cook of Portland, OR, Matthew Cook and his wife Courtney of Bend, OR, Alyssa Messmer and her husband Ben of Ann Arbor, MI, Ana Moura-Cook of Palo Alto, CA and Thomas Moura-Cook of Ithaca, NY. Her great-grandchildren are Marlo Quinn Cook and Atlas Carrington Cook. She’s also survived by three nieces, two of three nephews, and their spouses and children.

A service and celebration of her life will be held Saturday, 11/9 at Willamette Hall, Mirabella Portland, 3550 SW Bond Ave, Portland, OR 97239 from 2-4pm.

Funeral arrangements co-ordinated by threadgillmemorial.com

Dead End #1--Rose Wilder Lane & King Zog

Dead Ends--#1--Rose Wilder Lane

When I first began writing about Berta and Elmer Hader, I had no idea of how to write a biography. I asked others who had tackled this type of writing for advice. My son, historian Harold Cook, suggested noting every person who crossed their paths and making a file card for each. Besides family and neighbors, they had an amazing group of friends who often went on to major achievements. I used my computer to keep track of the key names and words on file cards as I came across them. They piled up.  Harold’s advice was right on. But many references turned out to be just dead ends.

 Berta moved several times as a child, while her widowed mother, Addie, worked as a social worker to support her two children—not easy in the late 1800s. Addie may have helped Berta learn social skills, as they moved from Mexico to Texas, Kansas City to Suffern, New York. Elmer had a far more stable childhood, but his parents also had to learn to adapt to new people and places. His father worked on the railroad, following it across the United States to San Francisco. His Swedish born mother would have learned how to adapt to new places and new people, as she collected recipes from the other immigrant women she met along the way. 

When Berta took over Eva Shepherd’s fashion illustrating business in 1915, she also did some freelance work for the San Francisco Bulletin. There she met two of their lifelong friends: Bessie Beatty, who was head of the women’s pages, and journalist Rose Wilder Lane.

Rose was beginning to regret her marriage to Gillette Lane—a man who had big ideas about making money, but who relied on Rose’s salary for support. The Lanes lived in the same apartment house as Berta—Rose’s mother Laura referred to Berta as the “little artist girl who lives in the basement.” When Rose left Gillette, the two women moved to tiny affordable studios on Telegraph Hill, where they became friends with more young artists and writers. As I found more about each friend, my biography cards began to fill up.

World War I scattered the group. Bessie Beatty was sent by the Bulletin to cover the Kerensky Revolution in Russia. Rose signed up with the Red Cross and was sent to Europe, and Berta went to New York City to wait for Elmer’s return. Later, after her Russian assignment, Bessie became editor of McCall’s magazine and hired Berta to work for her. After the war was over Rose moved to New York City and roomed with Berta in an unheated, run-down, old house--now the much-improved and heated Jones Street Guest House. After Elmer and Berta married, Rose’s restlessness returned and she eventually returned to Europe and Albania—a country that fascinated her.

I found a reference to a letter Rose wrote to her parents saying she received a proposal of marriage from Bey Ahmet Zogu, who later became King Zog of Albania. A letter to Berta from their mutual friend Jane Barrow referred to the proposal and said Rose had asked Berta to paint a miniature portrait of King Zog while he was in New York City. I wondered if I could find it. So I googled King Zog to see when he’d been in New York. There were no such references. Other Lane biographers implied it would have been impossible for his family to allow such a marriage. 

Still hopeful, I wrote to the Hoover Presidential Library, where Lane's papers are housed in their archives. They kindly sent me a copy of the six-page, single spaced letter she sent to her parents. In the letter she refers to “my Bey” as a diplomat in the Albanian government. It is full of details about her “proposal from a Prince” whose name she "could not mention because mail is being censored in Italy.” They were both in the town of Tirana when it was suddenly attacked by one of the mountain tribes. “Bullets, bullets everywhere and not an idea of why.” The next day her Bey sought out Rose in her Red Cross office, and proposed marriage. First he told Rose that her prematurely white hair "looked marvelous in the moonlight.” He then asked if her heart was free. "Quite, I said, and very fond of freedom. At that, the lid of Tirana blew off…and a bullet came in and took a lot of plaster off the wall behind us but we didn’t notice it much.”

She goes on about the attacks, and the history and ends the letter by saying “there is no use asking you whether or not you want an Albanian Bey for a son-in-law, as I shall decide it one way or another…I have not the least notion what a Moslem wedding ceremony is like.”

 Imagine that letter arriving at Almanzo and Laura’s house in Mansfield, Missouri! Full of references to a “Bey.” Of course the presumption was it was King Zog of Albania. The story went through the small town, and probably all her friends as an example of small town girl makes good.

I loved the letter. Rose wrote vividly. Reluctantly, I left it out of my biography because the engagement never happened, nor did Berta ever paint a miniature portrait of King Zog. 

A Biographer’s Joy

There is often a letdown when a project is finished and my focus has to change: after the children’s graduations, after my husband retired, when we moved to a new place to live. All these were happy occasions but they marked the end of an era. And then, of course, the new becomes the norm and life continues.

But I hadn’t expected a letdown after Drawn Together was finally launched. It was such a triumph to finally finish a very long project, and wonderful to see the manuscript turn into a real book, complete with cover, pages, and illustrations. I realized I felt bereft because I was saying goodbye to Berta and Elmer Hader, two meaningful people with whom I had spent ten years. But they also brought many new adventures and people into my life as I researched manuscript and art collections, wrote to and telephoned strangers, and connected with old and new friends who shared the same Hader passion. I felt I was also saying goodbye to all that.

But now my mail is bringing  interesting surprises. One day an excited email showed up in my mailbox, from a woman—Betty--I met years ago in my small town of Roseburg. We kept in touch sporadically after she moved away, and she bought a copy of Drawn Together through the mail from Concordia. She had just started reading the book and had come across a reference to someone familiar: Gertrude Emerson, one of the Haders lifelong-friends. Gertrude was an adventurous woman, who took a trek around the world in 1920, came back to the US, edited the then well-known ASIA magazine, and founded the still active Women’s Geographical Society. Gertrude married an Indian scientist, Dr. Basishwar (Boshi) Sen, and spent the rest of her life in India. Betty had known Gertrude’s entomologist brother Alfred, though she never met Gertrude herself, and she had also had married an Indian scientist who knew about the Sens. She was surprised to find new friends in a book. I was surprised to find we had friends in common. Who would have thought? 

Another letter bringing joy was one from an old friend from the northern Chicago suburbs—another place I lived for years. She found the book through my blog...and I had no idea she even knew I had one. She liked the book, which was good, but what was wonderful thing was catching up with long ago good friends, and finding out what their families are doing. It is way too easy to lose touch with people when we move away, but this new social media is reversing that. It’s a big world out there—but it is also very small.

I hope to have more of these serendipitous events, as the book moves out into that big and small world. I love feeling I am still linked, though tenuously, to the Haders, people I grew to love without ever meeting. It reminds me that past and present are totally linked, as well as all those people I knew once upon a time and those I have yet to meet. It also makes those ten years of sitting at my computer seem worth it!

Now that I have time to read for enjoyment, I plan to read  other biographies, and feel connected to those subjects and authors. When I was a child, history seemed very far away. Now I realize how close it really is. Why did I feel such a letdown?

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EDITORIAL CHANGES

The biography of Berta and Elmer Hader is finished! The proof copies will be coming out in 3 weeks, in mid-February. It’s been a very long process.

Wouldn’t you think, as an author of eight published books and several library guides for students, this would now be easy? Hah! One of the many admirable Hader traits was the way they adapted to the many publishing changes in the early and mid-twentieth centuries. Of course, those kept threatening their livelihoods—they supported themselves all their lives on their publications and art.

My writings are more “how to do it” books—companions to my teaching career. Writing is still basically the same—put your seat on chair with a supply of ink and paper. The technologies though, have changed the way books are edited and published.

The editorial process is always interesting. It’s been different with each different publisher. My very first book, a bibliography of academic articles on how to teach library skills came out in 1986 from Garland Publishing, a small academic press. The volume itself looks very different than books published before or since. Personal computers were just coming into widespread use. I couldn’t have written and rewritten the bibliography of 700 or so citations without using one, but the publisher couldn’t translate my computer created manuscript directly to their own computer. Instead, the editor sent me a template for the pages. All the margins were marked, and my typed pages had to fit this layout. Then each page was photocopied before being printed in the book. I had to create the headers and footers for the pages, and even make the index in those early, pre-mouse days of Microsoft Word. (I still have moments when I threaten to toss Mr. Mac out the window, especially since he knows more than I do but still allows my operator errors.)

The next books were also “how-tos” based on a favorite student project: the Battle of the Books program which is in almost every state. These were authored with several other school librarians, so a teacher new to the program would have a broad overview of how it could be adapted to different types of schools and libraries. The books came out from educational publishers, and the editors knew exactly what content was needed. We librarians did much editing among ourselves. Since we were all in different states, manuscripts went back and forth via the post office and emails, and by the time the finished product was in editorial hands, most of that work was done. Another “how to” book of household tips was edited and compiled as a fund-raiser for our branch of the American Association of University Women.

Walking Portland—the first version—was published by guidebook company, Falcon Press, in Montana. This was planned to be one of a series of guidebooks to convention cities for those who were tired from speeches and wanted to see the town. The series editor, Judith Galas, had written the first guide for Colorado Springs, and we used that as a template for Portland’s. She was fun to work with. She asked me to buy two identical city maps: one for each of us. I mailed her each walk as it was completed, and she checked it against her own map for accuracy. Then she would edit the text, making sure the punctuation and spelling were consistent and matched the company’s own style manual—a hyphen in Douglas-fir for example, and that street names matched those on the map. When she returned the manuscript back it was splattered with questions and suggestions on sticky notes.

By the time the second version of Walking Portland Oregon came out (Oregon was added to the title because east coast friends wondered what I was doing in Maine) Falcon had been sold to a much larger publisher, Globe Pequot, in Connecticut. Portland had changed dramatically in fifteen years: I’d told friends I thought the rewrite would be like sprucing up a few rooms in a house, but it was more like tearing the place down to the foundation and then rebuilding each part. Much of the city artwork had been moved to different sites and many new buildings had been built. An entire new city district—the South Waterfront-- had been created, which also gave access to the older neighborhoods once cut off by the freeways. New walks took the place of older ones.

Publishing had changed too. Not only was the new company much larger, but also computers had changed drastically in the intervening years. Instead of the original editor writing corrections on sticky notes, chapter by chapter, these were now handled using the computer editing function. Instead of retyping a sentence, changes were made in the handy little drop-down box. My notes were in one color and the various editors’ notes were in another. The mistakes were obvious.

Maps were another huge change. In 1998 I outlined my walks in colored ink on a large photocopy of the city map, and then turned those individual walks over to husband John, who had studied drafting in school and could draw excellent maps. Falcon designers used these maps as a base for their own style of map, with consistent icons for playgrounds and restrooms. Satellite imagery now provides “geopoints” for every spot in the city, improving map accuracy. These left me completely baffled. Fortunately, Carolyn, my city planner daughter-in-law, rewalked each chapter and converted all my notes into this new format. The maps in both versions of the books look the same, but the technology behind them is completely different.

My latest book has been edited over and over, and will be launched sometime late spring 2016. It is a life story of two very talented New York artists/writers, who had to change their creative output to meet new publishing demands. They were friends with a large community of artists and writers, who frequently put down their typewriters and came out for the weekends, leaving their typewriters behind to help Berta and Elmer hand-build a house from the ground up. Besides their creative output (nearly one hundred books and three Caldecott awards,) and weekend visitors, the Haders were active in gardening and conservation. They even successfully joined forces with other villagers to save their village from being destroyed by the State of New York.

There will be more about writing biographies in later blogs. This has been a real change in writing direction, requiring new skills and new ways of working with editors. Nothing ever stays the same!

Now I am working with another small academic press, Concordia Publishing. Because it is in Portland, there has been much more face-to-face interaction. I know my editors personally, which makes it easier to create an acceptable manuscript, and makes it harder to disappoint. This has been another new experience: not in the technology and the distance, but all the steps involved in a new type of writing. It took me nearly ten years to finish the biography. And it seemed so simple to start!

I’ve learned a lot, and I might as well share it. If nothing else, it will help me to remember for the future. I don’t ever expect to write another biography—but I have learned never to say never! Who knows.

* I longed for the early days of Walking Portland when all footnotes were done by feet, forgetting that those entailed rewalking everything at least three times to get things right. This WAS physically easier!

The Cluttered Computer Problem

Email is a wonderful research tool. I find a reference, look it up, and fire off an email to find out more about the topic. I add the note to my manuscript and go on, completely ignoring the source of the information. It seems automatic to document information from articles and books, but impossible to be equally as thorough with the emails. It’s because I save the emails, knowing the computer can find the item I need easily. What I hadn’t realized is how quickly my computer got cluttered, to the point that even it couldn’t find all the things I’d stashed in various folders under different names. If I don’t remember the name or key word in a message, it hides forever.

Another problem was changing ISPs when I moved. The emails stayed in the folders set up with the previous provider. I wasn’t able to access them all. So I finally hired someone to come over and get all my emails in one place. I wound up with about 5000 emails to and from all sorts of people. The only useful thing was that in most queries I had put the name of my subjects—Haders or Berta and Elmer Hader--in the subject line. Most (but not all) replies repeated what I had used. Unfortunately, sometimes I used a different subject, because the Haders were not the main focus. Such as finding information on impressionism, or miniature painting, or a particular friend.

So the last month or so has been spent tediously going through every email, deleting and/or moving every single one. Not fun!

Some were easy. Long ago I told friends that I would never pass on anything that would promise rewards, prevent disasters, or improve the world. I‘d deleted every funny that came in if it required going somewhere else like YouTube to open. However I’d saved far too many other funny cartoons and sayings sent to me by well-meaning friends. I’d gotten the first chuckle out of them—did I think there’d be more?

A few shortcuts helped get rid of another thousand or so. I first:

1) sorted the emails by the date column. Most of the ones before 2009 (when I started this project) were out of date. It was relatively easy to go through those earlier ones and toss them. Sometimes there was a date or a new address, and I noted those down on a piece of paper. (Yes, paper still makes my world go round.)

Then I

2) sorted the remaining emails by the sender column. That made it easy to go through and delete political messages, offers I’d kept to think about, notes pertaining to old newsletters I had edited and so on. I also was able to get rid of most of the “funnies” sent by friends, since most of them came from the same dozen people.

3) Sort # 3 was by subject. This worked well since the remaining emails were now ordered by subject, sender, and date. I found plenty of political messages, invitations to join newsletters from writer friends and organizations, magazine sales pitches and others I’d missed on the first go around, and more subjects I didn’t recognize. I used some of the subjects to set up mailboxes. Anything relating to the Haders went into a mailbox with that label. I labeled another one “IMPORTANT”: airline reservations, orders not yet received, items that needed immediate follow-through. Others were for family, friends, research items such as useful websites, possible publishers for other writings, and so forth. You’ll know what you need...and never want to see again.

4) For emails containing only a tidbit of something useful, I copied the tidbit to a computer sticky note or a “FOLLOW UP” blank page for things to do later. With the date on the note, I had an organized list—easy to check off or file later.

I was surprised how much info was hidden in the email clutter. I still have another thousand to go through, and more arrives every day. I’m debating about using the e-computer to automatically send things to smart mailboxes, but I’m afraid I might not never even notice them there. In many ways this paperless trail is too easy to ignore. With paper, I eventually have to face the paper piles or I can’t move!

Anyone have any more ideas for managing the computer flow?

Beginnings

When I decided to write a biography of Berta Hoerner and her husband Elmer Hader, I had no idea how to go about it. I wanted to find out how these two diverse California artists could not only fall in love (that’s relatively easy) but build a life together. Having had a long marriage myself, I know that blending two lives is not quite as easy as it seems in the fairy tales. The two people grew up in different places, had quite different artistic expectations, had different temperaments—and yet managed to build a fantastic house together (and I know divorces caused by remodels!), combine their artistic backgrounds into the field of children’s book illustration, entertain an amazing group of friends that were active in different careers, entertain them and their friends every single weekend while still publishing over a hundred books during their lifetimes. Elmer’s final words were “I had a darn good life” and he did. Their friend Rose Wilder Lane said they were the only people she knew that made a success in living. Mary Margaret McBride, the Oprah of 1930s radio, said her friends though the Haders must be “figments of her imagination” because they seemed like such a wonderful couple.

In these days of constant exposure to unfaithful partners in unhappy marriages, it seemed timely to have an account of a positive one. I wanted to find out what made this work.

There were 40 boxes of material at the University of Oregon. That’s a lot of correspondence, manuscripts, and letters! My friend Joy Rich, Berta and Elmer’s niece, also had inherited much of the letters and cards as books the Haders sent to the families over the years. So unlike some biographers, I had enough materials right at hand, and probably wouldn’t need to go to the many other places that also had saved Hader artwork and manuscripts. At least there was enough to work with in the beginning.

The problem with so much material is keeping track of it. I asked my historian son, Harold, who has written some very well-received historical biographies, how to go about it. I didn’t want to have to go back to find references and names. Hal gave me good advice for organization, though reminding me that “everything gets entangled with everything else.” He suggested 1) setting up a file drawer for the project with a) "various subfolders for the information you collect and b) another set of subfolders for the various drafts of the chapters you'll be working on. I think the main things to keep track of are first and foremost the bibliographical information, to which you can attach the notes you take."

It’s those bibliographic references that I’m always having to recheck. Information comes in many forms. Secondary information, from books and articles, are easy to handle. But someone says something pertinent, and I either forget who said it or how the quote was stated.

Hal suggested making sure that notes from the primary and secondary sources are in good order, and also make notes connecting things together. “Keep track of things like 2) the persons they worked with (so, little biog. sketches, and the sources for them), 3) a timeliine of events, 4) publications they were involved with, and 5) other themes such as early children's literature or environmentalism.

I must admit I haven’t always followed through—and I am now finding I have to recheck references. But that’s my fault. I’m still looking for the magic way to organize, just like I once looked for the magic way to raise kids. There isn’t any magic. It’s just work.

The other advice I have almost always followed is to have paper and pencil by every chair in every room, especially the bathroom and by the kitchen sink. (My muse must be a water baby—she prefers to visit me when my hands are wet and busy with something else.)

And I also keep a little notebook in my bag for jotting down ideas whenever they come. “In the middle of a project all kinds of ideas come at odd times. You'll hardly use any of them in the end, of course, but you won't want to lose the good ones.”

Again, if anyone has items to add to this, please let me know. I firmly believe in networking!

Finding a Theme

You’ve chosen the person. As you start collecting data, you should start seeing themes as well. What is the importance of this person’s life?

When I first began working on the biography of Berta and Elmer Hader, I wasn’t sure how to start. I knew their writings were considered to be excellent, were well reviewed and usually acquired by libraries. When I became a school librarian I realized I'd read some of their books as a child. I don’t remember any particular impact on my life, except the Hader books along with the Thornton Burgess books gave me a lifetime appreciation for the natural landscape. I suspect this theme may have also impacted many of today’s adults.

Susan Vreeland, author of historical fiction, spoke in Port Townsend, WA, in March. According to the online version of the Peninsula Daily News, (3/27/11) she said that “Historical novels are thematically based and biographies rarely are.” The theme of the Emily Carr story, The Forest Lover, was the artist’s affection for place. “It took me years to find this theme. If I had identified it earlier, I would have finished the book much earlier.”

Some of the most interesting biographies do have a theme, besides the chronological time line of a person’s life. Biographer T. J. Stiles in his Biographer’s Blog chooses his subjects, such as Jesse James and Cornelius Vanderbilt, because their lives do represent themes. After stumbling on the topics of cash being shipped around the U.S. and the rise of railroads, corporations and the modern financial system, he looked for a subject to represent these themes. He discovered Vanderbilt, known in his time as the Railroad King.

Bob Welch wrote American Nightingale, a biography of World War II Army nurse Frances Slanger, who landed on Utah Beach and slogged her way into Belgium with her medical unit. Her letter in Stars and Stripes celebrating the American GI was published after her death. In his book Pebble on the Water, Welch says “What proof did I have that Frances Slanger had made any difference in the world around her?...How had she touched those around her? How was the world different because of her? If I couldn’t answer those questions, I didn’t have a book.” Theme again. He also went on to comment: “Writers start their research with the presupposition that everything means something. Not that you can hope to answer every question that the evidence triggers. But you look for themes, patterns, tendencies, then connect the dots, taking into account not only what the information suggests but from whom it came.”

So, it seems that theme is just as important in biography as it is in fiction. Having a theme in mind is helpful. The downside is the tendency to ignore facts that don’t match the theme—which a true biography cannot do! Any answers to this dilemma?