Jackie Kennedy's project to research the murder of a Russian spy is just one topic of books authored by prisoners and the homeless. "SALVAGING BRILLIANCE" is the goal of a new nonprofit in California. Hidden in the human wreckage of our prison system and among people on the streets, Entrepot Publishing finds the surprising gems. "I first saw the opportunity when I read a prisoner's memoir of surfi
ng the Grand Banks, written while doing time in a California state prison. It was an eye-opener," explains editorial director Rick Flanders. The true Jackie Kennedy story came from a businessman whose life was in ruins but whose experiences in Russia were arresting. As Flanders and Entrepot founder Fischer started to look systematically around, they found a steady stream of surprising writings. There were novels about corporate scams and the Knights Templar, memoirs of boozy hilarious hitchhiking marathons and shattering romances. Dover Road, another Entrepot find, is a bittersweet tale of a wealthy family in Santa Barbara where the son is hooked on he**in and the father is hooked on making money. All the cliches about prisons fell aside. Entrepot realized it had discovered a vein of gold in a mountain of sludge. But the authors were living shattered lives. They had only a vague idea about traditional publishing channels or newer e-publishing possibilities. Finding an agent or uploading a book for sale on Amazon.com was totally beyond the abilities of these brilliant but constricted authors. So Entrepot defined a mission. It would provide editing and ghostwriting help to those that not many others would. It would organize public relations and promotions. In short, it would help prisoners and homeless authors to build careers. "They totally merited the salvage effort," says Joe Fischer. "These guys needed a support system and nothing in the publishing industry was organized to pull them along." Entrepot's marquis launch effort is the Jackie Kennedy Onassis book, "SQUISHED". The title came from a warning she gave the author that he would end up squished in a trash can somewhere after he revealed the spy plot to her. As an editor for twenty years at Doubleday, Onassis guided a hundred books to publication. But SQUISHED wasn't ready to go when she died and had sat unfinished until recently. The project was the subject of a chapter entitled "A Spy Story" in a 2010 biography of Onassis, "Reading Jackie". Thus Entrepot was easily able to verify the trust of its author's claims. The story is a spectacular tale of Russians highly placed in scientific and museum circles who knew the signs of an impending nuclear first strike by the Soviets. Key scientists and Da Vinci paintings would be hidden so as to be safe from nuclear war. The Russians established a channel to warn the Americans. Ultimately, the ringleader was murdered after the KGB found out. Entrepot is gearing up to launch a crowdfunding campaign in hopes of getting this, and many other works, published.
