Dawn Raffel, author of The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies, joins us in the GrottoPod this week to talk about the sometimes-painful process of writing the book. Raffel is also a novelist, short fiction writer and memoirist whose previous books include the best-selling The Secret Life of Objects. “I felt a responsibility to Couney himself, to get it straight. To tell it well. Sometimes I wonder what he’d think of this book.” 7:36: Raffel shares why her path from idea to book was sometimes “torture”, 23:06: Navigating the twists and turns of researching a somewhat shadowy historic figure, 32:08: How the book touches on important themes in American history, 42:30: Gathering the surviving “incubator babies” together for a reunion, 44:20: The responsibilities Raffel felt in telling the story of an overlooked (and perhaps misunderstood) historic American figure.