An interview with Carrie Lynn, author of Finding Fitzgerald

  Recently, we reviewed the memoir, "Finding Fitzgerald," by author Carrie Lynn. As a fellow fan of the late writer, John D. Fitzgerald, she recounts a decades-long love of the writer's work and her efforts to uncover the mysteries behind his writings. While his best-known books, such as Papa Married a Mormon, and The Great Brain series, are based on people, places and events in Fitzgerald's life, they are fiction, with locations and individuals' lives adapted to fit the historical fiction. 

     Here is an excerpt from my review: "Finding Fitzgerald" is a memoir. Lynn blends her dogged, determined search to uncover the secrets behind John D. Fitzgerald's mysteries, with her family life of the past two generations. The book opens with Lynn visiting Price, Utah. That's where the Fitzgerald family actually lived. Frankly, for this Fitzgerald fan, it's a thrill to witness Lynn talking to people who knew the Fitzgeralds of the novels, to have her be at locations that we see in a photo in one of the novels, and see buildings and streets in Price that she can visualize as settings in the novels.

     Here's an interview with Ms. Lynn. I appreciate her taking the time to answer these questions as she is busy with a book tour.

     Plan9Crunch: Tell us what you discovered about Price, Utah, and how it can serve as a model for Adenville and Silver Reef, both prime locations in Fitzgerald's books?

Lynn: Ages ago, some historian somewhere, determined that Adenville was based on the Utah towns of Silver Reef and Leeds. The deductive reasoning that brought them to that conclusion makes sense. John morphed the placement of Adenville, from the very beginning. He still had family living in Price when he wrote his first book, Papa Married a Mormon. Therefore, he set his stories in Southern Utah – Dixie. He connected it to cities in that area like Enoch. Historically the closest thing to Adenville-Silverlode would be Leeds – Silver Reef. Maybe someday when we get to ask John himself, he will confirm the idea. However, he only gave 2, maybe 3 interviews about his work. No one asked that question.

Originally when I ran across the Leeds-Silver Reef, I agreed. Yet the more I read, the more I learned that Price has a gorgeous lawless history. Complete with saloons, gunslingers, outlaws, thieves, and the like. In its infancy Price was Adenville/Silverlode rolled into one. It straddled the train tracks. Then a fire decimated the town. And in an instant, the lawlessness ceased. You can’t even imagine it now in modern day Price. The city rebuilt itself and has maintained a kind of Mayberry-eque quality. My key understanding came from a hand drawn map. From that map, I could better imagine the gunfights, the town layout, and the stories that John remembered when he wrote his books.

Plan9Crunch: The story of the Great Brain's character, Tom Fitzgerald, is very bittersweet. He had a life with a lot of tragedy and setbacks, yet you encountered recollections that paint a very positive picture of him. Do you see the real Tom depicted in the books?    

Lynn: I do. Partly based on a handwritten letter by a neighbor, named Elgin Grames, and his devout commitment to Tom Fitzgerald being “known as “The Great Brain””.  I think John admired his brother immensely. He had 2 older brothers in real life. He could have used either of them, if the model were entire fictious. But I think he saw in Tom something, that he knew life may not see in Tom, that was his heart. I believe he wanted the world to remember the same guy, that Elgin Grames remembered.

One of the key things I learned to keep in mind during my research was to stop letting my book images crowd my discoveries. We as readers will never get to read the original “Great Brain” book. It was the fourth and final book in John’s initial series. Because it was never published, as he initially intended, we likely get a more slanted view of T.D. because John eventually had to write 7/8 books on the “Great Brain” character. I conjecture that many of the stories in The Great Brain series were likely spread across his siblings and friends. I have no absolute proof on that. But if I ever found that out, I wouldn’t be surprised.

      Plan9Crunch: As an equally devoted fan, tell us what it is like to actually speak with an correspond with people who knew the individuals characterized in the books?

     Lynn: It wasn’t always as fun as one would imagine. I never spoke with any of Tom or John’s siblings. His younger brother Gerald was alive but barely communicative. He would be closest conversation I would have. All of my interactions with Gerald happened through his son, who was very gracious and as helpful as he could be.

     The others I connected with were helpful, but in a tougher way. The first painful correspondence I received, didn’t even make it in the book because it’s about a lesser known family member, but the sting of the letter really set me back. I had put the characters in the books on such a pedestal, that having them taken down, sometimes felt like a wrecking ball. Yet, after I let things settle, I could find nuggets of joy in the raw pieces. Over time it made me love both versions of a character even more.

Plan9Crunch: Finding Fitzgerald is a memoir of your family as well. Do you think your children will share the same lifetime love for the series and novels that you do? 

Lynn: Likely not. They do still talk about them. Largely because of the project. They have a favorite book, Great Brain at the Academy. Each of them has their own favorite authors and book series. I love that. We have richer conversations because of it. Ironically, I have a slew of other favorite books and authors, too. Fitzgerald just needed to be found.

Plan9Crunch: Why do you think Fitzgerald created historical fiction, rather than placing the books in Price and keeping characters as they were? Was he writing more about an era than just a family?  

Lynn: Possibly. It is also possible that he was respecting all the living relatives in his family that still lived in the area. He had siblings and cousins in the nearby area. He also wove his tale more broadly with those extended family members initially. We don’t see it as much it The Great Brain. Lastly, who knows what he initially submitted for publication. He took the story off of family history, as he and his siblings recalled it. Maybe the initial story was too complex? Or may too unmarketable? We have no galley proofs to look at.

Plan9Crunch: What advice do you have to future Fitzgerald sleuths? What issue unresolved could be still be answered? 

Lynn: My best answer is “go with your gut.” This Fitzgerald discovery story seems to have an assignment for each seeker individually. None of have ever met. We have never lived by each other. Or hold any other connection than the love of the books John wrote. We each brought something new, it added to the next seekers information. Specific ideas would be finding the pulp fiction stories he wrote. There are more than 300. Finding his pen name. there is also a world of Utah pioneering that the Neilsens did, especially Aunt Sena’s husband that may unearth new insights. Whoever takes it from here, will be led. That is all I know. It really is a Field of Dreams experience.

Memoir searches for answers of writer John D. Fitzgerald, Great Brain ...

Review by Doug Gibson

There are many fans of the late writer, John D. Fitzgerald. I agree with the description of him as "Utah's Mark Twain." 60-plus years ago he wrote a trilogy of novels about the Fitzgerald family, where a transplanted Pennsylvanian emigrated to Utah to find his wayward brother and also found love with a young Mormon woman. "Papa Married a Mormon" and raised a family.

In his later years, Fitzgerald penned several more novels, geared to younger readers, that focused more on the Fitzgerald children, particularly "The Great Brain," Thomas Dennis Fitzgerald, or T.D., who solved dilemmas that perplexed his contemporaries, even the adults. The successful series, spawned a film, "The Great Brain," that unfortunately had little distribution but can now be viewed at YouTube. The series, all with titles that began with "The Great Brain ..." was so popular that after Fitzgerald's death, the discovery of another "Great Brain" manuscript was also published.



I repeat there are many fans of John D. Fitzgerald, but there are others, myself included, who can be regarded as "'super fans." He is among our favorite writers. We don't just read his novels, we re-read them to tatters, introduce them to others, most satisfyingly to our children, and yes, we think about the Fitzgerald family a lot. We harbor warm sentiments towards Papa, Mamma, T.D., the Great Brain, the narrator, J.D. (John D. Fitzgerald), S.D., older brother Sean Dennis Fitzgerald, Uncle Will, Aunt Cathie, and others.

The books are written as if they are recollections of childhood and family. The principal towns, located in Southern Utah, are Adenville, a predominantly Mormon community, and mining town Silverlode. There are even photographs of the major family characters in the novel, "'Papa Married a Mormon."

I promise I am getting to a review of the wonderful book shown above, but this preface is necessary. If you are a super fan of John D. Fitzgerald, you will encounter a dilemma if you do any cursory research of his popular novels. There is no Adenville. No Silverlode ever existed. The major characters can be located, albeit some with different names. However, these characters don't, for the most part, match how they are depicted in the novels.

Quite frankly, this shouldn't be a surprise. The books are clearly marked as novels, or fiction. You go to the library, "Papa Married a Mormon" is in the fiction section. The "Great Brain" books are in children's fiction. But if you are attached to these novels, it's easy to succumb to the belief they are real.

The author of "Finding Fitzgerald," E.L. Marker (WiDo Publishing, 2019) Carrie Lynn (buy it here), was introduced to the novels at roughly the same age I was. "The Great Brain" was first read to her on a family camping trip in 1976. Our teacher read "The Great Brain At the Academy" to my fifth-grade class a year earlier . Lynn was mesmerized. I was mesmerized. I had to read every "Great Brain" book. And then I had to search the wonderful, now sadly gone "Acres of Books" in Long Beach, Calif., and buy the three novels Fitzgerald had published in the 1950s.

"Finding Fitzgerald" is a memoir. Lynn blends her dogged, determined search to uncover the secrets behind John D. Fitzgerald's mysteries, with her family life of the past two generations. The book opens with Lynn visiting Price, Utah. That's where the Fitzgerald family actually lived. Frankly, for this Fitzgerald fan, it's a thrill to witness Lynn talking to people who knew the Fitzgeralds of the novels, to have her be at locations that we see in a photo in one of the novels, and see buildings and streets in Price that she can visualize as settings in the novels.

One of the most satisfying questions that Lynn answers in "Finding Fitzgerald" is her realization, through a study of Price and its diverse communities, that this town/city offered John D. Fitzgerald the settings of both "Adenville" and "Silverlode." Price had its sections that resembled a small Mormon community and it had its settings where there were saloons, etc. In fact, one interesting fact learned is that Papa Fitzgerald, Tom senior, was not a newspaper editor but nevertheless had a fascinating life. For a long time he traveled through life, pursuing adventures, including ore mining, before settling down in Price and marrying and raising a family.

These location and personality disconnections are important for super fans, because, as Lynn poignantly notes in her memoir, they can tear at the heart. I recall in the late 1970s dragging my family through back roads in Southern Utah trying to locate the ruins of "Adenville," supposedly destroyed by a flood, and the ghost town of "'Silverlode." I thought I found "Silverlode" in Silver Reef, but couldn't find any sign of "'Adenville," but hopefully thought a big white home might have been "Uncle Will"'s place that must have survived the flood. 😀 This just provides an example of how powerful a connection to Fitzgerald's writing can be for some readers.

I need to pay tribute to the author's patient research and determination. She pored over long ago newspaper editions, public relations materials for novels and film, corresponded with Fitzgerald family members and friends, other researchers, started a blog, talked with academics, shared her findings with loved ones, sought and followed their advice, and went on pilgrimages to the areas where the books' characters lived. She not only eased our concerns about the literary license, she provides strong examples, through family lore and her research of Price and other areas, of the origins and inspirations of many of the events and individuals who populate the novels.

And the memoir will tug at your heart when Lynn writes about the real-life "Great Brain," Tom Fitzgerald. The inspiration for brother John's most famous character had a life filled with much tragedy. He was alone most of his latter-half life, and encountered a lot of adversity. But we also learn that he was a survivor, a man who was respected by many, shared his knowledge of subjects with others, and "read a lot of books." I get the feeling from what I learned in the memoir that John loved and respected Tom, and wanted others to feel that respect.

Lynn's memoir flows well between her family and her research. Her embarrassment at falsely claiming to be a writer doing research leads to the happy result of actually completing a book. Her mixture of emotions from discovering and deciphering Fitzgerald mysteries is exemplified in her procrastination to read "Papa Married a Mormon" to her reluctance to pursue answers from a prominent, finally located source, because she doesn't want to bother him. She eventually "bothers" the source for more answers. That's fortunate, because the journalist that is me was decrying her for shying away from that source. It's also heartwarming to read of Lynn being on a panel as a Fitzgerald expert.

There's one more Fitzgerald mystery solved in "Finding Fitzgerald" near the very end: the likely identity of the man who inspires Bishop Aden, the Mormon bishop of "Adenville." I'll say no more on that, leave it to the reader to learn, but will add that in my opinion the Price resident who characterizes "'Mama, Tena Fitzgerald," is likely the most similar in real life to her character in the novels.

Do yourself a favor reader, enjoy "Finding Fitzgerald." The author did a yeoman's job in unearthing so many facts and underscoring how wonderful John D. Fitzgerald's historical novels are. And make sure you pick up a few "Great Brain" books and "Papa Married a Mormon." They are available still, in shops and via Amazon. In fact, "Finding Fitzgerald can also be purchased at Amazon here.

The once very obscure film 'The Great Brain,' starring Jimmy Osmond!

The Great Brain, 1978, starring Jimmy Osmond.

This isn't a great movie, by any stretch. The acting is hammy, and a very young Jimmy Osmond is frankly, too inexperienced, in my opinion, to play The Great Brain. But if you like the John D. Fitzgerald novels, you'll find the film a treat.

I'm glad it's out and that I taped it in the early 1980s. It's a definite G and post-toddler kids will like it. However, those adults unfamiliar with the Great Brain character may get bored at the juvenile story.

On the plus side, the sets of early, rural Utah are pretty well done and the cast, if inexperienced, is at least earnest. Also, this is a rare film that is almost completely faithful to a book. Fans of The Great Brain will enjoy seeing what they read faithfully adapted to the screen. Examples include The Great Brain, Tom D. Fitzgerald, having adventures with a Greek immigrant family, his fights with friends, his scheming with brothers, including narrator John D. Fitzgerald, and his change of heart when he helps a young crippled boy.

This is was once an almost impossible film to locate. It never runs on TV it seems and has never been released to video or DVD. Rumor has it the film is locked in litigation. That's a shame if true, because it seems ideal for a new production or a re-release via DVD to at least the Utah/Mormon market. Still, in recent years it has popped up on You Tube, and you can watch it above. My guess is that the copyright finally expired?

Fitzgerald's tales are still much loved and I hope someday an enterprising filmmaker produces a new version(s) of The Great Brain movies. The 1978 film was directed by Sidney Levin. It also starred Pat Delaney, Fran Ryan and Cliff Osmond.

-- Doug Gibson

John D. Fitzgerald and The Great Brain

By Doug Gibson

Editor's note: This essay originally appeared in the July 5, 2009 Standard-Examiner.

'The Great Brain' remains popular to those kids who read the series
In educator Colleen Smith's recent fourth-grade classes at Wasatch Elementary School in Ogden, time is spent listening to and reading about the exploits of a brainy, scheming little capitalist who roils the early 1900s town of Adenville, Utah, with his exploits.

The books are The Great Brain series, written by the late John D. Fitzgerald, a roving Gentile reporter/adventurer who spent very little time in Utah after his 18th birthday in 1924, but kept tucked into his mind an endless trove of fond memories. Those memories, along with a strong talent for writing and a healthy dose of literary license, produced three novels for adults and eight "Great Brain" books for kids. Those books were introductions to Mormonism for hundreds of thousands of readers.

"The Great Brain" series features Tom D. Fitzgerald, the smartest kid in Adenville, who puts his great brain to work trying to separate cash from the other kids, and many of the adults, in town. The books are narrated by Tom's younger brother, John, who provides colorful commentary. Fitzgerald wrote seven "Great Brain" books. After his death in 1988, a partial manuscript for another book was discovered, and it was polished and published several years later.

Smith uses the books to teach Utah history to her fourth-graders. "(The books) talk a lot about Utah history," she says. Examples include the town of Adenville, its supposed founding and growth - including the planting of trees there - and the early 20th century relations between Mormons and non-Mormons, she says.

"The Great Brain" is still popular to those kids who read the series. Smith says her students enjoy the books so much they hunt and snatch up the series' titles at school libraries.

The books were wildly popular in the 1970s. I recall my fifth-grade teacher reading "The Great Brain at the Academy" to us in Long Beach, Calif. The easy-to-read prose, Fitzgerald's sense of comic timing, and the morality tale found in each chapter no doubt contributed to the success. Utah historian Audrey M. Godfrey, in a 1989 essay, "The Promise is Fulfilled: Literary Aspects of John D. Fitzgerald's Novels," correctly pegs Fitzgerald as a regional writer, a sort of Utah Mark Twain, who stresses authenticity through characterization and very detailed settings.

This is particularly evident in Fitzgerald's creation of Adenville. Witness this descriptive excerpt from "More Adventures of the Great Brain": " ... I looked at the trees planted by early Mormon pioneers that lined both sides of Main Street. Adenville was a typical small Mormon town but quite up to date. There were electric light poles all along Main Street and we had telephones. There were wooden sidewalks in front of the stores. Straight ahead I could see the railroad tracks that separated the west side of town from the east side. Across the tracks on the east side were two saloons, the Sheepmen's Hotel, a rooming house ..."

The books are crafted as short stories, strung together to both tell a good tale and teach a lesson. "Every chapter has a moral lesson," says Smith.

Tom's youthful urges to gain are generally tempered by a serious plot twist requiring charity, or an authority figure that moves the children to a more altruistic stance. To Smith, Tom's newspaper editor father often serves this purpose. In one example, he tempers his son's eagerness - and success - in publishing a competing newspaper by pointing out that most of his "news articles" were in fact gossip designed to hurt subjects and appeal to readers' baser instincts.

Another moral lesson, appropriate to today's political climate, involves the persecution a Greek immigrant named Basil receives at the hands of jingoistic townspeople. His persecutors, including the father of a friend of Tom, complain immigrants are taking jobs away from native-born Americans. The chapter ends with the bigotry resolved - at least among the kids - as Tom teaches Basil how to assimilate. True to his character, the Great Brain tries to profit from the endeavor.

Godfrey, in an interview, says the moral lessons in Fitzgerald's tales were likely influenced by the good feelings he experienced toward the Latter-day Saints growing up as a gentile in Utah. A consistent virtuous character in Fitzgerald's works is Bishop Ephraim Aden, the tolerant, gentle, elderly leader of Fitzgerald's Adenville.

However, the ecumenism prevalent in Fitzgerald's works may owe more to his idealized, fond memories of growing up in Utah than to reality. Price, Utah, where he lived, perhaps was a less tense place for Mormons and non-Mormons than Southern Utah, the setting of his novels. The guilt and secrecy, of, for example, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, is not found in Fitzgerald's novels.

"He had good feelings towards Mormons," says Godfrey. Bishop Aden, she adds, is representative of the larger role a bishop assumed in a Utah community 100-plus years ago. "In a small town there was a lot more give and take" between Mormon and non-Mormons," she says.

The accidental series

The "Great Brain" series came about almost by accident. One night Fitzgerald and his wife were entertaining friends for dinner. Fitzgerald's fiction writing career had peaked after the publications of "Papa Married a Mormon," "Mama's Boarding House" and "Uncle Will and the Fitzgerald Curse." The author recounted some long-ago tales about his older brother, Tom. The guests loved the stories so much Fitzgerald was motivated to write his first "Great Brain book.

The series, published by Dell, offered a second literary career for Fitzgerald and likely provided him and his wife Joan a comfortable retirement.

The writer Fitzgerald enjoyed an adventurous life through most of the past century. He left Utah at 18 to try his hand at being a jazz drummer. Early in his career, he was a pulp fiction writer and likely authored more than 100 lowbrow novels and short stories. If any survive that describe "Adenville" or his Utah youth, they have not surfaced. He worked as a staff writer for the New York World-Tribune and labored on the foreign desk for the United Press wire service.

He was also a bank auditor and even tried his hand at politics, working on the staff of Republican Wendell Wilkie's failed 1940 presidential campaign. He conceived the idea for "Papa Married a Mormon" while working as a steel purchasing agent in California in the 1950s. His sister Rose, although not listed on the title, was active in the novel's creation. Fitzgerald's novels, including the "Great Brain" series, were inspired by his mother, who asked him to one day write about "the little people" who founded the West, bankers, laborers, mother, merchants, newspapermen, the clergy, etc.

Besides his better-known works, Fitzgerald wrote two other children's novels and a book on how to craft a novel. He freelanced extensively, contributing more than 500 articles. "To thousands of youthful readers in the United States, England, and Germany he is a well known author. The Great Brain's character in Fitzgerald's series for children is as familiar as Tom Sawyer to these young people," wrote Godfrey in her 1989 essay.

Despite his literary achievement, much of Fitzgerald's life remains a mystery. Besides Godfrey's essay, there is little independent research on Fitzgerald. In fact, his death in 1988 was barely mentioned by Utah media. Perhaps Fitzgerald encouraged the secrecy. His books are crafted as if they include real places and real people. In "Papa Married a Mormon," there are even photos of the main characters.

Yet, while many of the tales related may have occurred in part and characters existed, the books are clearly fiction. There is no Adenville. Papa Fitzgerald is not a newspaper editor. There was no Jesuit academy in Salt Lake City 100 years ago (the setting of "The Great Brain at the Academy").

This literary license has led to confusion. Some libraries have placed "Papa Married a Mormon" in the biography section. There is a Web site devoted to trying to locate the "Southern Utah locations" of "The Great Brain" novels. On a personal note, I spent a long afternoon as a young teen dragging my parents through back roads of Southern Utah searching for the non-existent ruins of Adenville.

A perusal through long-filed away records in Carbon County and Price, Utah, unveil some of the mystery of the writer Fitzgerald's life. Most of the characters existed. Most are interred in Carbon County. The "Great Brain" himself, brother Tom Fitzgerald Jr., lived his entire life in Price. He died in 1988, the same year as his writer brother. By the way, the Great Brain was not a Mormon, but a lifelong Catholic. Tragedy dogged the real-life "Great Brain." In 1925 his young wife Fern died while pregnant and their daughter was stillborn.

Fitzgerald's father, Tom Fitzgerald Sr., was a well-known businessman who served as a Price City councilman. At his funeral, future Utah Gov. J. Bracken Lee was one of the pallbearers. Fitzgerald's mother was a Mormon who married a Catholic - that much is true. Her name was Minnie, not Tena, her name in the novels.

There is still much more to unearth in Carbon County and other areas should a biographer one day tackle John D. Fitzgerald's unique life.

Fading in popularity

It has been two decades since historian Godfrey wrote her essay on John D. Fitzgerald. His "Great Brain" series is still in print, but it has clearly faded in popularity. "Harry Potter," "Twilight" and other series are read today in far greater numbers than "The Great Brain" was read even during its most-popular era.

"(Most) kids don't even know about it. They are into more modern subjects, like fantasy, escapism," says Godfrey.

Nevertheless, the success of the series in Smith's fourth-grade class, and its popularity at other schools where it's part of the curriculum probably will prevent Fitzgerald's re-creation of turn-of-the-past-century Utah from ever growing extinct.

The Great Brain has proven to be immortal, and perhaps more importantly, he has managed to turn a tidy profit for The Fitzgerald family for half a century.

A postscript: With the explosion of Mormon-themed cinema, the Great Brain seems ideal for adaptation. Although few know this, it was made into a film in 1978 and starred Jimmy Osmond! On Osmond's Web site are stills from the film.

Trying to locate the film is futile. It is out of print and never had a video release. Why not is anyone's guess, although rumor has it the rights to the film are tied up in litigation. This seems silly, since the film had a mediocre box-office run. The film aired on TV and there may be murky taped-off-television video copies circulating.

I have seen the film several times -- I taped it in 1981 -- and it is OK, although acting is not Osmond's strength. The settings, however, are quite well done and the plot is faithful.

Hopefully in the future a new, presumably better, adaptation of Fitzgerald's series will be produced for a new generation of children.