Cassie McCullough

But certainly, you know, there were many examples, like even...

You know, I could I could give several like Charles Stratton, who was known as Tom Thumb, which people might know from The Greatest Showman.

Although in that film, he is, of course, in his late 20s.

And in reality, he was bought at the age of four years old by P.T.

Barnum from his parents.

So although that wasn't a kidnap, there were other incidents like it.

You know, the two headed Nightingale who were Millie and Christine McCoy.

They were repeatedly kidnapped by showmen and showed all across the world.

In one case, it involved a $45,000 swindle.

So, yeah, it was many, many haunting and harrowing examples of people being mistreated and treated like commodities.

Yeah, very much so.

It was the time the book is set, 1866, was a time of great colonial, well, great implies it was a great thing.

It wasn't, I'd say, massive colonial expansion where England was sort of out conquering nations and sort of claiming people as their own.

And they brought back many people from England.

from many sort of indigenous tribes and they showed them as sort of these oddities or novelties where really this kind of white power was portrayed as as the thing of the i suppose normality and anyone who fell outside of that was commoditized in this way so yeah um very very troubling past

It was very difficult.

I really wrestled with many questions when I was writing it.

You know, am I the right person to tell this story?

Is this a narrative that should be perpetuated?

But I essentially came down to the opinion that the more voices that were added to a cause, the better.