The story behind the story

With each passing year, I find myself more and more drawn to the story behind a story -- that is, not just who wrote a novel or a nonfiction book and when, but more importantly, how and why.

So it was a delight to read in The Sunday Oregonian about Floyd Skloot, a Portland author who's written 15 books, and his daughter, Rebecca, who's just landed 0n The New York Times best-seller list with her first book, the unlikely story about Henrietta Lacks, an African American woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. Her cells are said to be among the most important things to happen in medicine in the past century because the cells harvested from this one woman -- without the knowledge of her or her family -- have helped scientists study a variety of diseases and develop drugs for treating them.

What's interesting about the Skloots is how Floyd taught Rebecca at an early age about story and character, partly from playing make-believe games, complete with phony accents. Likewise, seeing how much freedom dad gave daughter during her headstrong days in Portland's public schools is instructive because it shows there's never one straight, narrow path to success.

As reporter Jeff Baker notes in the story, "Like father, like daughter; Rebecca Skloot follows her father's literary path," the Skloots have come a long way in the past 30 years:

Rebecca Skloot has absorbed her father's lessons and written something special with his help. "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" is a sensation that has been on The New York Times best-seller list for 10 weeks and put her in more than 50 cities and on "The Colbert Report." It's an overnight success that's the result of 10 years of hard work and a 20-year obsession, and right now Rebecca and Floyd Skloot agree on just about everything except the reason for her success.

It's the power of the story, she says. No, it's the power of the writing, he says.

I suspect it's both. I'm going to add this to my reading list. But if anyone reading this blog gets to it before me, I'd sure appreciate your take.

Photo: Torsten Kjellstrand, The Oregonian