What Death Revealed: Author Jonathan Lash’s Path to Becoming a Writer

By Andrea Marvin

Author Jonathan Lash hopes his path to becoming a writer is aspirational to others who might want to write a book. His journey as a storyteller followed an intense and successful career as a federal prosecutor and environmental litigator. He also served time in the Peace Corps, worked for the Vermont Secretary of Natural Resources and spent time as a law professor and college president. Author Jonathan Lash’s work has given him a depth of knowledge and understanding about underlying social injustice issues and imperative environmental topics of our time. He has written for several publications, such as the Harvard Business Review and the Washington Post, and his first book, A Season of Spoils, revealed the Reagan Administration’s assault on the environment. But now, Jonathan is exploring his creative side by writing fiction. From developing characters to letting the stories naturally unfold, he finds the writing process quite different and more imaginative, which has resulted in his latest novel, What Death Revealed.

What Death Revealed is an exciting read with interesting characters and a backdrop that reveals hard truths about the past. It’s a tale about the divide and segregation within one city, the capital of the Free World and the poorer neighborhoods where mostly people of color lived. The story paints a picture of how the city looked eight years after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, with the aftermath of riots and racism and systemic injustice still prevailing. The novel takes readers on a journey with a young district attorney who stumbles upon evidence of corruption tied to the Metro subway project, which aimed to reconnect divided communities in the city. While investigating, the district attorney crosses paths with a black police sergeant with more practical views of justice. Together, they confront racism, corruption, and murder. An interview with Jonathan reveals his passion for the characters who he says naturally lead his storytelling process. He explains how writing this story made him reflect on the time period and opened his eyes to the depth of systemic injustice that existed.

Tell our readers about your new book, What Death Revealed.

It is a tale of two cities. The gleaming capital of the free world and the poor, mostly black chocolate city that had no say in its own governance for centuries. There are a series of murders, corruption and power struggles that took place there and tore the cover off some of the racism.

Did your career background inspire the book, or how did you develop the plot?

It's interesting. I didn't come up with the plot, but instead, the characters did when writing this book. I was a federal prosecutor in Washington, DC, almost half a century ago. It was the first thing I did after law school, and I worked for a wonderful federal judge and then went to DC to become a prosecutor. I thought I ought to try being on this side for a while and get a lot of trial experience. It was very intense and an incredible experience. In hindsight, I was slightly clueless about what was happening around me. This novel, What Death Revealed, is set at that time. But it’s not a memoir; it's entirely fictional.

The story came about after I retired. I had been president of a college for seven or eight years and then retired in my mid-70s. I joined a writers’ group, and one day, the moderators gave us a bunch of prompts, one of which was to write a dark scene. I was sitting there thinking, and this scene of a real experience I'd had jumped into my mind. One of the things that prosecutors did was go in early in the morning and prosecute the arrests that cops had made overnight so they could be sent on to the grand jury for action. One morning, these three vice squad detectives came in, and they were tired and grumpy. I wrote about that scene. I hadn't thought about it in decades, and it just sprang into my mind. I read it to the group. A wonderful poet and musician said it sounded like the beginning of a crime novel. It was like madness took over, and my head was ringing with imagined scenes and different characters, so I just started writing.

The characters decided what the book was about and taught me many lessons about stuff I hadn't seen when I lived there. To the extent that when I got stuck at one point, as all writers do, I had the characters interview me. I wrote an interview where the characters were asking me questions and they said, you know all this stuff, just stick to the story, we know where we're going. And then that broke the log jam. With about 20 pages left, I didn't know how the story would end. I envy writers who have plots that they lay on the wall and have every clue there. That wasn't what this was like at all. These characters just gave me dictation, which was a fabulous experience.

It sounds like your best ideas for writing this book came to you in a state of flow.

Exactly. I hadn't written any fiction since high school. I’ve written non-fiction books and many articles. I was an environmental advocate and had plenty to say. However, the writing focused on being analytical and focused on law and science. During the experience of writing What Death Revealed, I just wrote what came into my head, and it was an incredible change.

Go into that a bit more. How’s your writing process different for fiction compared to a nonfiction story?

Most of the time, I found it was fun. It was a blast. When writing nonfiction, I'd have to force myself to sit down and keep focused, knowing I had to follow an outline, meet a deadline and need to get it done. For this book, I would sit down, and it would take me a couple of minutes to get caught up where I was, and then I could write anywhere. I could be sitting on a plane or in a noisy living room. It's a wonderful experience. I mean, what a gift to retire and wonder who you are and what you'll do and suddenly become a writer by accident.

Is there an underlying message in the story? What type of experience do you hope readers have?

I've been having a wonderful experience of getting some fan mail. People are saying, you kept me up last night because I had to finish the book. I read mysteries, and when one is that good, I can't put it down; that's the ultimate. I hope readers get that experience where it's a really good read, and they like the characters as much as I do and that they find the unraveling of the narrative exciting.

As far as the setting of the book, this was a racist city. Congress had maintained Washington DC as a plantation; the city was 70 percent black, and the police department was 80 percent white. The white establishment was absolutely in control. Then, with the assassination of Martin Luther King, the city exploded, and President Johnson had to send tanks into the streets of Washington. When I became a prosecutor, when this book was set, it was seven years later, and the city hadn't been rebuilt. The core of the city was still in ruins from the effects of the riots, and Congress had given the city home rule. But that created this incredible struggle for power, which, among other places, was playing out in the police department.

These characters helped me to look back and see what the hell was going on around me and how racist the police and the court systems were. The city was in the process of building its metro subway system, and it was by far the largest public expenditure in the city's history. And, of course, there was all kinds of corruption. So, you combine all those things, and it was certainly a lesson to me about what happens when you begin to break open systemic racism. And I hope it helps readers think about that also.

Why did you choose to focus on that period? What are your thoughts on present-day social justice issues like the Black Lives Matter movement? Do you feel that we’ve made progress as a society?

The first question is easy; the second one is hard. Let me take them in order. I really didn't decide the time period. One particular morning, the scene just came into my mind. And I've begun reading about

writing since doing this book. For example, Stephen King refuses to develop plots. He feels that stories are things you unearth, like an archeologist digging up bones. That said, it just felt like the scene was there, and I had to find it. It was obviously something that was in my head that I needed and wanted to address.

Before I retired, I was president of Hampshire College, a wonderful, unique, and progressive college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It’s part of a five-college consortium. That was amid the Black Lives Matter movement, and all the issues of race were breaking open. I worked hard to increase the representation of people of color on campus among students and faculty. But when tensions rose, it taught me many lessons. I didn't get credit for working to change the complexion of the school; I got pushed because there was so much left to be done. I learned about growing up with white privilege, which certainly describes me. I grew up in Greenwich Village with wonderful intellectual parents, went to the best schools, and so forth. I never thought of that as privileged; it was just what my life was. I was glad to be writing a book where I could explore those issues.

I see my kids and my grandkids; there's still a lot they need to learn. That said, when I go to Washington these days, I see an incredibly diverse city. Washington went through these very difficult times and is much better off than it was. When it was built, the metro connected different parts of the city. So, it's no longer divided into black neighborhoods and white neighborhoods. And the federal government has attracted an incredible range of people.

Looking back at your time in Washington, DC, as a federal prosecutor, how would you describe that experience?

I was very focused on being a good trial attorney. I had done well in law school and I loved law. But being a trial attorney is different; that's not what you learn in law school. It's basically legalized fighting without hitting the other guy. We had a considerable workload. What federal prosecutors do is handle federal crimes. For example, there's a United States Attorney for San Francisco with a large staff handling federal drug cases, big federal corruption cases and so forth. In Washington, because Congress didn't trust the city government when they created the city home rule, they kept control of the criminal prosecution system. So, the United States Attorney in Washington handles both federal crimes and all the local felony crimes -- murder and rape and armed robbery. If you went to law school and wanted to get trial experience in a hurry, that's where you'd go. I had cases scheduled for trial every single day, and it was intense and exhausting. Having grown up a white liberal in Greenwich Village, Massachusetts, I was learning a lot about the world. I was not too focused on a lot of stuff that was going on around me. When I look back on it, it was just appalling.

Tell me about your other books and published work focused on environmental advocacy.

When I left the US Attorney's Office, I went to work for the Natural Resources Defense Council, a very aggressive, litigious environmental group. They are a wonderful group of people. During the Carter Administration, a lot of environmental legislation was being passed. Carter was getting the Alaska bill through. So, I spent four years advocating for the environment in a friendly setting, and then Reagan came in. The people Reagan hired to run the environmental agencies hated the environmental agencies and did not believe the mission was important or that the federal government should be interfering with what businesses and individuals did. They broke the law to follow their political predilections. We just sued them and sued them and sued them - they didn't even try to follow the law. It became clear that Reagan would run again, and somebody should take this case to the public. I talked to the other organizations, and they all agreed to support writing a book. I got a couple of grants and wrote a book about Reagan's first four years, what he had done, and what the impacts were. There were so many people who were shocked and angry about what had happened, and of course, people in the agencies wanted to see it exposed. The book is called A Season of Spoils.

A Season of Spoils was published in the days when publishers were still publicized. They sent me on a book tour all over the country, talking about the Reagan Administration. Following that, I mostly did

articles to get the message out, ranging from op-eds in the Washington Post to articles in the Harvard Business Review about greening businesses.

What’s next for you? Do you plan to make What Death Reveals a series?

I'm well into the sequel. Beforehand, though, I took a break and wrote some other short stories. But I missed the characters. There’s a scene in What Death Reveals in which an abusive alcoholic judge gets pushed to resign because he's been caught soliciting a prostitute who is actually a policewoman. So, the next book is about his efforts to get revenge, when he's murdered, who did it, and how it came about.

Is there anything else you want to add?

It turns out there are many people out there in their 70s who always thought they had a novel in them but feel it’s too late. So, people find my path very inspiring. I mean, here I am, this 79-year-old guy who's just published his first novel. It’s not a bestseller, and I'm not under any illusions, but it feels really good. This is what I wanted to do. Now, I can think of myself as a writer.

Author Jonathon Lash’s latest book, What Death Revealed, is available on Amazon. Readers can also find A Season of Spoils there too, a story that reveals his expansive knowledge of environmental issues. In 2006, Rolling Stone Magazine profiled him as one of 25 “Warriors and Heroes "fighting to stave off planet-wide climate catastrophe.” He was named one of the “100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics” by Ethisphere magazine and one of the world’s “Top 100 Most Influential People in Finance” by Treasury and Risk Management magazine. Beyond his law and education career background, Lash was the president of the World Resources Institute for over a decade, which seeks to solve global environment and development problems. Lash lives with his wife in Western Massachusetts and is an avid fly fisherman and gardener.

For more information: https://www.jonathanlash.com