2004 News Archive

Questions & Answers with William Rawlings, Jr.

What sparked your interest in the Lost Confederate Gold?

One of the most enduring of “Southern” legends is the fate of the gold in the Confederate Treasury that “disappeared” following the fall of Richmond, Virginia, in spring 1865. It seems that everyone you ask purports to know what “really” happened to the gold. It seems every town within 100 miles of the route following by President Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet as they fled south has a story about where the gold is buried. I spent many hours as a teenager searching for this and other buried treasures with a World War II vintage mine detector. To answer the question directly, the story is part of my childhood and part of my heritage. I thought it would be fun to spin a tale about what might have happened to it. I like to think that even if The Rutherford Cipher is a work of fiction, it could have happened as I said it did.

Did you have an Aunt Lillie growing up?

Of course! Even though she dies before the book starts, Aunt Lillie was the keeper of the secret and hence becomes one of the major characters in the book. She is based in part on my Aunt Elizabeth Newsom. She was, for years, the unofficial historian and guardian of the Newsom family records that date back to the early nineteenth century. My oldest child, who was born just weeks before she died, is named after her. I think Aunt Elizabeth would have been proud to be the model for Aunt Lillie.

How did you research this novel?

One of the most important things to me as a writer is to get the details right. As I said before, even though my works are fiction, I want the reader to be able to say that “it could have happened this way.” First of all, I read extensively on the last days of the Confederacy, the fall of Richmond in April 1865, and about what is known of the fate of the gold that was in the treasury. I physically visited all the locations at which the action takes place, so my descriptions of them are accurate. The Savannah River Site — a nuclear weapons production facility — figures prominently in the book. Since Sept. 11, 2001, it has been closed to outsiders, but prior to that time I spent a very long day viewing the land and facilities on a pre-arranged tour. I gleaned the details about security there from newspapers and public sources, and of course got a huge amount of information from the Internet. I may have taken some literary license with a detail here or there, but I think that most readers will find my facts startlingly accurate.

What was the most important thing that you learned after your first novel that influenced your second novel?

That’s a hard question to answer. I wrote my first novel, The Lazard Legacy, somewhat on a whim and have been wonderfully surprised at its commercial and artistic success. In truth, I never really imagined that it would do so well, so I have listened very carefully to readers’ comments about what they liked — and didn’t like — in the manuscript. I think as a writer, one matures and develops a style. Viewed from the craft of writing, I think The Rutherford Cipher is well done. More importantly, however, it has a gripping, fast moving plot with twists and turns that keep a reader glued to the pages. I’ve heard my first novel described as “a real page-turner.” This one is even more so.

Why do you write?

Southern men tell stories. This is not a unique observation, but one that I arrived at on my own. I have been lots of places and done and seen lots of things. I have lots of stories. Some are fun, some are fascinating, some are almost unbelievable, but they’re true. My professor of humanities at Emory once said that the difference between a writer and an ordinary man is the writer’s ability to capture in words a moment in time. The measure of the writer’s success is his ability to reproduce the same scene and the same emotions in the mind of the reader as were felt by the writer when he experienced or envisioned that moment. That is my goal. I like to tell stories. It is not much of a stretch to string it all together and call it a plot, or to embellish it all a bit and call it a novel.