David Grann appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss his new book, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.
Grann’s book, published by Doubleday in April, tells the true story of an 18th-century British vessel that was wrecked off the Patagonian coast and of what happened to the survivors. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “a brisk, absorbing history and a no-brainer for fans of the author’s suspenseful historical thrillers.”
Grann talked to CBS correspondent Jon Wertheim about the process of writing the book. “I spent the first two years doing research in a way very suited to my physical attributes, which was in archives.…But there came a point where I began to fear that I could never fully understand what these 150 or so men had gone through on that island unless I went,” he said.
The author talked about chartering a boat to visit Wager Island, almost 1,000 miles south of Santiago, Chile. “The boat looked pretty big!” he recalled “I thought, This is going to be like a Jacques Cousteau expedition. We’re going to be fine. We kind of stayed, originally, through these channels that are sheltered in Patagonia. I think, This is perfect. It’s beautiful. And then there’s a certain point where the captain says to me, ‘All right, now we got to go out into the open sea.’…And that was my first glimpse of these terrifying seas. It was truly terrifying, at least for me.”
Grann also reflected on his experiences working with Hollywood. Five of his books or articles, including Killers of the Flower Moon, have been adapted into films, with two more on the way.
“I don’t like talking about it,” Grann said with a laugh. “I don’t like it. I don’t, because it’s just a different world, you know? It’s just a different world.”
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
