Becoming a Detective: The Research Behind “Countess of Cons”

People often ask how I know what Catherine Seeley was thinking.

The truth is, I don’t.

That’s one of the greatest challenges—and greatest responsibilities—of writing narrative nonfiction. I can’t invent conversations or emotions simply because they make a better story. Everything has to grow from evidence.

Sometimes that evidence comes from a court transcript. Sometimes it’s a census record, a city directory, or a single sentence buried inside a newspaper published more than a century ago.

Writing Countess of Cons has often felt less like writing and more like assembling a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box.

One of my favorite moments was discovering the will of Catherine’s mother, Mary Allen Kenney. Until that discovery, I was unsure I even had the right set of siblings for Catherine. Mary’s will named several daughters and a niece, allowing me to put together the entire family!

One newspaper called Catherine a swindler. Another portrayed her as an insane old woman. Court records offered facts but little humanity. Her daughters left nothing behind to explain what it was like to live with a woman who spent decades reinventing herself.

Somewhere between those fragments was a real person.

My job became finding the places where those pieces overlapped.

Every discovery led to another question. Why did she suddenly choose to go from one city to another? Why adopt a new alias? Why abandon one scheme only to begin another hundreds of miles away?

Some answers appeared years later in another newspaper, another court transcript, or sometimes—a will.

Those moments are what make historical research so rewarding. The smallest clue can completely reshape the story.

Readers will eventually see the finished book. What they won’t see are the countless hours spent chasing one tiny detail because getting the story right matters.

That’s the hidden adventure behind every page. I may never know exactly what Catherine was thinking, but every new discovery brings me a little closer to understanding the life she lived.