Writing Narrative Nonfiction: Finding My Voice Through the Authentic Voices of Others

My most recent book, The Family Behind the Girl Scouts of America: Lives of the Kinzie-Gordon Clan, 1750s-1950s (McFarland, 2026) represents the culmination of 35 years of research, writing, revising, and reassessing. In the end, this odyssey was necessary to create a final product that reflected my voice.

(How I Wrote My Book Without an Outline.)

The key to finding that voice lay in embracing an authentic, yet engaging, way to share the voices of others.

I can proudly say I have been a professional writer since the age of 17, when I was hired as a school news reporter for my hometown newspaper. Since that time I have never stopped writing professionally, even as I held down other full-time day jobs, from educational publishing editor, to freelance ghostwriter, to professor, to current college administrator. In this way being a working writer is not unlike being a working actor or any other creative professional. You have to practice your craft continually even while finding other ways to pay the bills.

What ultimately became my current book began as a paper for a graduate school class many years ago, then later morphed into a history dissertation. A major academic press expressed interest in publishing a version of my dissertation, but as anyone who has written such a tome knows, it takes a lot of revising to turn a treatise designed to satisfy your doctoral committee into a book even other academics would want to read. I have to admit, by the time I finished my PhD I was completely in love with my subject matter, but also a little burned out and wanted a break from the academic grind.

Then there was the question of audience...

Having interest from a major academic press was flattering, but I knew in my heart that revising the dissertation into a book worthy of that particular press would require a lot more research and theorizing to impress their prestigious critics. And I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to impress them.

Part of me really wanted to disregard academia and rewrite the study purely for a popular audience. Torn between what seemed like two daunting, but different, directions, I set the project aside to focus on other personal and career goals.

Over the years I kept coming back to the subject of Girl Scout founder Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low and her fascinating family. During that time other scholars published very fine books touching on different parts of the story, but none that examined the full breadth of this five-generational saga in the way I was seeing it through the documents this family left behind. 

After a while, the story became more of a personal passion project that I just wrote for myself and a few close friends who were also historians. I presented papers and lectures about my research, all the while continuing to hone my writing skills largely by ghostwriting historical materials for educational publishers. During one long lull in my freelance work I wrote and self-published a novel, mostly as an experiment and personal challenge.

What I did not realize at the time was that writing that novel as a lark helped me discover new things about myself and my writing style. That experience unlocked the key to producing a book that finally struck a balance between the academic and creative sides of my brain.

The key was embracing the genre of narrative nonfiction.

This genre allowed me to maintain fidelity to my academic training while also telling the multi-generational story of this one family in an engaging manner that would read more like a novel than a textbook. I could tell the true story more like the way I saw it replayed in my mind.

By the time all the stars aligned to result in a book contract with a small academic press whose editors supported my vision, the extra years I had spent examining literally thousands of archival documents paid off in my ability to reflect the voices of the real individuals who appear more like “characters” in the book. With nearly 1,000 endnotes from more than 400 sources, I feel confident that I have represented the high historical standards of my academic training. For readers wholly uninterested in endnotes or bibliographies, they can enjoy a sweeping saga that may expand their understanding of American history while entertaining them with a true story that is, at times, more shocking than any work of historical fiction.

Ironically, one of the narrative themes of my book involves examining how this family managed to overcome generational conflicts to create an environment that enabled Daisy Low to survive a lifetime of challenges before achieving her greatest success in midlife. The Kinzies and Gordons fought on opposite sides of the U.S. Civil War, a conflict that nearly broke the union of Daisy’s mother (a Northern Kinzie) and her father (a Southern Gordon). Despite their families literally trying to kill one another on the battlefield, this couple was able to reunite and reconstruct a new, healthier family dynamic in which to raise Daisy and her tight-knit siblings.

As a historian, I believe this family’s story has much to teach modern Americans about their past and about how new generations can reshape the future. As a fan of sweeping historical fiction, I find these people and their lived experience as captivating as any imagined characters. My hope is that readers who pick up the book will find themselves just as captivated by these real people and their stories as I have been.

At a moment in our history when Americans are divided over numerous issues, including loss of faith in experts and institutions, perhaps the genre of narrative nonfiction itself offers an example of how to bridge the seeming divide between academic and popular audiences. I know it served in that capacity for me as a writer.

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