David Grann adapts 'Killers of the Flower Moon' for young readers, visits Oklahoma film set

David Grann was lucky to have a pair of top consultants inside his own home while he was working on his latest book.  

"My kids ... I would (ask) 'Do you know this word? Is this word, OK?' I'd just yell downstairs while I was adapting, 'Is this a word that you would be familiar with? Would you use with this verb?'" Grann recalled with a chuckle.  

Fittingly, the best-selling and critically acclaimed author has dedicated his new book "Killers of the Flower Moon: Adapted for Young Readers" to his son, Zachary, 17, and daughter, Ella, 14.  

"When I was in this adapting process, Ella was of the age for this book, and when 'Killers' came out, for so many years, she couldn't read it. I couldn't give it to her. So, that always seemed to me a shame," Grann said in a recent phone interview.  

"So, I really saw it, in many ways, as a kind of a passion project." 

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In the new young readers edition of his 2017 New York Times best-seller "Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI," Grann chronicles for teen audiences the slayings of Osage Nation citizens in 1920s Oklahoma, after the oil boom made them wealthy. The brutal killings became known as the "Reign of Terror" and the center of a major investigation by the then-fledgling FBI. 

"There's a kind of growing sense of a fear of history, and I don't really understand that. This is really important history. It's part of our past; we should be aware of it," said Grann, who recently visited with his family the set of the film adaptation of "Killers of the Flower Moon" in Oklahoma.  

"My purpose always, for me, in writing this book was hopefully ... just to address some ignorance that was prevalent outside of the Osage community about these cases, and now to hopefully broaden that readership to a younger generation."  

New edition meant for middle-grade readers 

Released Nov. 16, his new edition of "Killers of the Flower Moon" is aimed at middle-grade readers, or children ages 10 and older. It marks the first time Grann, whose other best-sellers include true-life stories like "The Devil and Sherlock Holmes" and "The Lost City of Z," has adapted one of his books for youngsters.  

"To be honest, I doubt I will do it again. There was something about this story in particular. I had a daughter who was a middle school, and when the book first came out, she was younger. ... She had always expressed an interest in wanting to be able to read it, and I always felt this kind of heartbreak that I couldn't say, 'OK, here, go ahead,'" said Grann, who is also a staff writer at The New Yorker.

"When I would speak to a lot of people, they would always say, 'I wish I could share this with my kids. But it's maybe too graphic in some places.' So, it kind of planted this idea: 'It's such an important story. How can I hopefully share it to people like my daughter and her age?'" 

"Killers of the Flower Moon" reveals the grim history of the Reign of Terror through the story of Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman who lived near Fairfax and whose entire family was targeted. Between 1920 and 1925, there were more than 60 mysterious or unsolved murders in Osage County, all connected with Osage holders of "headrights," who were entitled to a share of the lavish income from booming oil drilling on tribal land.  

As oil production in the Osage Nation reached a zenith, the tribal members famously became the richest people per capita in the world — and the area became a magnet for schemers who plotted to relieve the Osage people of their wealth by any means necessary. 

Grann credited Emily Easton, publisher of Crown Books for Young Readers, which is an imprint of Random House Publishing, with helping him adapt "Killers of the Flower Moon" for an adolescent audience.  

"The most important thing was I did not want to do this if I couldn't maintain the heart of the book," he said. "She really helped me just figure out and focus in on 'OK, you can have this autopsy, but we don't need a page and a half. We can get the unsettling quality and not lose the sense of horror that took place ... but make it appropriate for a 10-, 11-, 12- or 13-year-old.'"  

Not glossing over history 

Since he had worked to pen the original edition "Killers of the Flower Moon" in an accessible style, Grann said he didn't have to dramatically change his National Book Award finalist to make it suitable for young readers. 

"Some it was just terminology. There were also ways to really maintain the book, but just make sure I define my terms (and) don't assume knowledge," he said. "An adult will instantly know what a bootlegger is, but I said to my kids, 'Bootlegger? Does that ring a bell?' And they were like, 'Uh, no.' So, define a bootlegger when you introduce it and make sure there's that kind of clarity. So, that was really the process." 

Making the book appropriate for teenagers and preteens didn't mean sugarcoating or glossing over the history, as Osage tribal member Dennis McAuliffe Jr., author of the book "The Deaths of Sybil Bolton," noted in his foreword to Grann's young readers edition. 

"Everything is still in this book, in terms of all the crimes, what transpired, the perpetrators. The voices of the victims are still recorded. And if you were to lose that, then there's really no point," Grann said.  

"Reading this, you will come away with a deep, profound sense of what racism and greed, combined together, fueled together, the horrors that they can cause. And I think that's really important for us to understand in our history — and to understand the kind of people we want to be in the future and to learn from it. So, to me, that was really the most important threshold." 

Family visit to Oklahoma set

Although he is working on another book, which he described as "a kind of real-life 'Lord of the Flies,'" Grann is still feeling the cultural impact of "Killers of the Flower Moon."  

Despite the difficulties of traveling during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Connecticut native recently returned to Oklahoma to visit the set of Martin Scorsese's adaptation of his true-crime novel.  

"I came for a few days and actually brought my family, and it was pretty remarkable to see. I'd never seen a set like that before," Grann said. "It was pretty remarkable — and a little bit eerie at times — to see the scenes kind of being reconstructed and brought to life in this new kind of form, in this new medium." 

Filming on Scorsese's Apple Studios epic began in April in Oklahoma after extensive pre-production and a year-long delay due to the pandemic. Centered primarily in Pawhuska and Osage County, production wrapped in September.  

By coincidence, Grann said he encountered on set an Osage extra in "this extraordinary costume" who turned out to be a local he had befriended while researching his book. The production hired many Osage Nation consultants, actors and artisans, recruited hundreds of extras and took over parts of downtown Pawhuska for more than two months so buildings could be transformed and the street could be covered in dirt for the 1920s period film.  

"That was perhaps the thing that just for me was so exciting and gratifying, to see that level of Osage involvement," Grann said.  

With its reported budget of at least $200 million, Scorsese's fact-based Western, which is expected to be released in 2022, is believed to be the biggest movie production ever undertaken in Oklahoma. The iconic director assembled a star-studded cast, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser, John Lithgow, Barry Corbin, Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson, along with Native American actors Lily Gladstone, Tantoo Cardinal and Tatanka Means.  

After consulting with their dad on the young readers edition, Grann said taking his children with him to the set was a profound experience.  

"When they were little, I was going to Oklahoma, and when I was researching the book, I would go twice a year. I would stay in downtown Pawhuska ... for three weeks to a month, just kind of living there to do research. So, they would always know I was kind of going off, and then I would come back and tell them about what I was doing," he said.  

"Obviously, seeing the movie set was really interesting. But I also think, for them, seeing this place that has obviously animated me for so long ... was very powerful."