Local author shares tales of survival

Imagine surviving a shipwreck on the coast of Africa and finding you’ve crawled from the ocean into the Sahara Desert. This was the fate of John Riley, a merchant ship captain from Connecticut who was enslaved and forced across the Sahara Desert in 1815.

Riley’s tale was the subject of last week’s lecture by Richmond author Dean King in the University Student Commons.

A tall man with dirty blond hair and glasses, King has written five historical nonfiction tomes sprinkled with what he calls “fictional techniques” that he hopes brings the tale alive for readers. His books range in topic from famed British novelist Patrick O’Brian to his latest book “Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival” about shipwrecked Captain Riley’s unwilling trip across Africa.

“I want readers to have the same experience that I’ve had with reading, which is the wonderful experience of being taken away from your reality and moved to some other place,” King said in an interview before his lecture. “That kind of experience where all you want to do is go curl up in bed and get your book out and read because you want to be transported to another place.”

King says immersing the reader in the history behind his books is one of his main goals as an author.

“I want to engage people in our great history and not bore them,” King said.

The Richmond native spoke at VCU about his experiences researching for “Skeletons on the Zahara.” To gain a more complete understanding of what Captain Riley experienced as he journeyed across the Sahara, King traveled to Africa to retrace Riley’s route through the desert as closely as possible.

This attention to detail is what piqued Sam Forrest’s interest in King. Forrest, an ex-sailor who graduated from VCU in 1962, said King’s manner impressed him the first time they met.

“I was at the James River Writers Conference maybe six months ago, and I sat beside him,” Forrest said, gesturing to King, then preparing for his lecture. “I asked him what he did, and he said he was a writer – he was a real laidback guy, you know. I loved his book. That’s why I’m coming tonight – because he went back to Africa.”

During the lecture, which also marked the 20th year of the Cabell Library Lecture Series, King described his experiences in Africa and stressed the importance of meticulous research.

“I knew that I really needed to do everything possible to write the definitive story,” King told the audience. “To go out there and find all the information that would enlighten this tale two centuries later.”

King stressed the point that novels and movies today tend to hand the characters in the story over to the readers fully developed. This time, the author wanted the audience to go home with a sense that research took more effort than descriptions on a page.

“I knew that Riley’s tale had a lot of stuff that people considered far-fetched even then,” King said to the crowd. “That these people of the desert lived off of a bowl of camel milk a day, that they drank camel urine to cure ailments, and that they actually heated up the equivalent of bowie knives in fires and applied them to the skin to cure themselves of various diseases.

“A lot of people didn’t believe what they had read, so I knew that I needed to go there, to actually check out what he had written, to see if the physical descriptions of the places and people were accurate.”

After the lecture, King met with audience members outside the lecture hall and signed copies of his books, which were for sale. Sam Forrest said he already had an autographed copy, but that King’s lecture alone was enough for him to attend the lecture.

“The idea of trusting the universe to guide you – we’re on the same page,” Forrest said as he gathered cheese on his plate at the reception. “His adventure was different than mine – he was on land, I was on the ocean – but trusting the unknown, we have the same message.”

David Robbins, another Richmond author who founded the James River Writers Festival, was on hand for the lecture. Robbins said King, who serves on the board of directors for the writer’s festival, has a personality that shines through in his work.

“He has a real iron will about him,” Robbins said. “In the James River Writers, we butt heads all the time. The great thing about Dean is he listens very well. He understands surrender – he understands to give in when the tides of events take him a different direction.”

“Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival” was released in March 2004. The History Channel plans to show a documentary based on King’s work in the Sahara later this year or early next year.