“The Angel Makers”- a book talk with author Patti McCracken

“A group of local wives conspiring together, and one woman at the center of it all…In 1929, a dark secret at the heart of a Hungarian farming village was finally exposed. For more than 15 years, Nagyrev had harbored a group of serial killers, one of the largest murder rings ever recorded. They came to be known as The Angel Makers.

Patti McCracken was born in Virginia Beach, Va‭., ‬in October 1964, the youngest of six children‭. ‬At 15, she moved with her family to Clearwater, Florida. After college, she worked at a newsmagazine in Washington, D‭.‬C‭. ‬for a decade before moving to Chicago, where she was an assistant editor at the Chicago Tribune‭.

She eventually relocated to Europe to work as a journalism trainer, free press advocate, and newsroom consultant for the then-emerging democracies of the former Soviet bloc and post-war Bosnia. She was based in an Austrian village near the Slovak border, but her work often included long stints in Eastern and Central Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus, and later North Africa and Southeast Asia.

“I was living in Europe when I discovered the story of the Angel Makers. And while I did all of the reporting and research while I was still living there– and got the book underway there–much of it was written from my home in Chilmark.”