It's a Biography!

A new book is born! Miracle at Tenwek: The Life of Dr. Ernie Steury arrived in our offices last Friday afternoon. This one is especially dear to me because it is the most complicated book I have worked on to date.

Ernie Steury is definitely one of those unsung heroes. He was a World Gospel Mission medical missionary who is largely responsible for founding one of the world's premier medical facilities in Tenwek, Kenya. When he arrived on site in 1959, there was little more there than a small first-aid dispensary housed in a shoe-box sized building. At his retirement nearly forty years later, Tenwek was a medical compound providing sophisticated, cutting edge health care for the thousands of people living in the area. One of his huge accomplishments was having a hydro-electric dam constructed using the waterfalls near Tenwek. Finally having a stable electric source in 1987 improved tremendously the treatment the hospital could offer.

The process for this one was a little different than anything I have done to this point. The book was written by Gregg Lewis, but there was a close connection with the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, which actually commissioned Gregg to write the book. David Stevens, the CMDA CEO, worked with Ernie at Tenwek back in the seventies and eighties, so this was definitely a project close to his heart. So where an editor usually is working only with an author, I had a seeming cast of thousands with Gregg and Dave and Ernie's widow and children to work with, and that can complicate things a little.

There are also some interesting curves in editing a biography/narrative. I inherited the project after it had been sent out to a freelance editor to make initial cuts to the lengthy manuscript. One of my first tasks was ensuring that everything still flowed and made sense with the cuts she had made. That continued to be a challenge throughout the project. For example, you have to make sure that if one of the children has been included in a cute anecdote in chapter 8, that the birth of that child has been mentioned previously. People, places, incidents all have to have been explained at some point. It's an interesting challenge.

I also found myself reworking some of the material--breaking it up into chapters and assigning some chapter titles. And then there is the tug of war at the end when the author realizes that there still is room for more material and wants to put back some of the things that had previously been cut. Another new experience for me was having a photo section with captions.

But it's here--all 336 pages--warts and all. Unfortunately, the interested parties were very quick to find and draw to our attention some minor items that were missed in the editorial process (read places where Annette the editor messed up). But when I showed one of said warts to my managing editor, she sympathized, agreed that the author could have waited a while longer before pointing these things out and needed to stop looking at it, and then said, "Get used to it--because it's going to happen again!" True words of wisdom from one who has been there.