Patti McCracken spent fourteen years immersed in an archaeological expedition about the Angel Makers, exploring the lives of the women involved, the conditions they lived under, and the state of Hungary during that era. She meticulously combed through transcripts in the Szolnok archives, working long hours in a musty, dimly lit room that was uncomfortably hot. Her remarkable Hungarian assistant, Attila, a local historian, was by her side, helping to translate documents—some nearly a century old—while Patti typed the English translation into her MacBook.

In addition to her archival work, McCracken hired translators to assist in translating local news articles from the time of the “Arsenic Trials,” working closely with the library to obtain the relevant materials. She toured the local prison, attended trials, and interviewed a wide range of experts, including Central Europe’s leading criminal psychiatrist, medical historians, military historians, descendants of both victims and perpetrators, police officers, professors, and even meteorologists. She read extensively—village monographs, history books, Hungarian literature of the period, military memoirs, and more.

The depth and breadth of her research explained the long gestation period of The Angel Makers. McCracken’s approach was thorough, driven by the dogged persistence of a seasoned reporter. Once the research was complete, the storytelling phase began.

Before embarking on The Angel Makers, McCracken was a print reporter in Europe, based in an Austrian village near the Slovakia-Hungary border for around 15 years. During that time, she wrote about a wide array of subjects, from Austrian finger wrestlers (which is not thumb wrestling) to the last remaining leper colony in Europe, located in Romania. Her articles were published in prestigious outlets like Smithsonian Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Tampa Bay Times, The Guardian, Columbia Journalism Review, and many others.

In addition to her reporting work, McCracken spent two decades as a journalism trainer across the former Soviet bloc, the Balkans, the Caucasus, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. With her diverse career and experiences, she certainly has many stories to tell.

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