The Little Girl Book Podcast

Author Jeremy White presents The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery. The tenured cynic's hopeful book details how Jeremy's wife, Edie, discovered her biological family in early 2018, and the beautifully insane, transformational adventure that ensued. After altruistically submitting her DNA, Edie ultimately solves a mystery that had been plaguing an enthusiastic, gangster-adjacent Ukrainian American family for 65 years, but only after she initially learns that her pacifist father is cited in two books for challenging David Duke with a bloody knife at LSU.   The Little Girl Book Podcast promises to deliver moving excerpts from our powerful story about healing, as well as personal insights from the book. We'll also offer peeks behind the scenes at our process of putting it all together, including traveling on COVID's eve to Seattle, Austin, Chicago, and California wine country to meet Edie's far-flung new folks.   Stay tuned for Episode 1, arriving December 1, 2023. Check out LittleGirlBook.com, and follow @littlegirlbook for updates on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and the platform formerly known as Twitter. 

Our story opens in the Baton Rouge home of author Jeremy White and his wife, Edie. He describes her seeing a picture of her biological father for the first time.   Jeremy then reveals to listeners how he walked away from two decades of satire and football officiating to focus on his first book, The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery. He also explains why, when our story's reluctant hero decided to lead this emotionally daunting adventure, he vowed to be by Edie's side in what would become their beautiful journey.   The opening chapter then tells how the future Marine Corps officer candidate and Naval Reservist met at LSU in 1991. Listeners also learn about Edie's loving adopted family, the O'Neals of Maringouin, Louisiana. Unlike Jeremy's late father-in-law, the town doctor who didn't want his two adopted children learning about their origins, his mother-in-law, Ducky, is ready to break HIPAA standards to help Edie find her birth mother, once she opts to put herself "out there" on AncestryDNA. Jeremy notes the irreversibility of submitting one's DNA—which Edie does solely for the benefit of an unknown woman—and the perils that accompany such a decision, before preparing listeners for "the greatest, most surreal, transformational experience of our lives."   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Edie receives her DNA results in early February 2018, while she and Jeremy were neck-deep in annual preparations to captain a large float in the infamously irreverent Spanish Town Mardi Gras Parade. She initially ignores Ancestry's email, only to be sucker-punched by its iPhone app at work the next day. "John Hart is your father" is seared in her memory. This bombshell, thanks to Ancestry's common-relative feature, separates Edie's paternal matches from those that could help solve the puzzle on her mother's side.   Jeremy also introduces Edie's "other parents," the Wagleys, an otherwise childless couple who always treated her like she was their own daughter. Edie tends to the affairs of Earle Wagley with weekly trips to the ninety-five-year-old widow's Maringouin home. The chapter closes with Edie confounded by two weeks of futilely trying to identify which of the myriad John Harts in the world is her father.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

On Saturday, February 17, 2018, Edie reaches out to Beth, a former newspaper copy desk coworker with a master's degree in library science. In the closing hours of what would have been the eighty-fifth birthday of Jeremy's late father-in-law, Doc O'Neal, his youngest daughter and her friend search online for the correct John Hart. Hours after sending a brief message to the mysterious man's Ancestry account, Edie identifies another DNA match, Justin Hart, as her younger paternal half-brother living near Seattle. Edie closes her browser tabs when she and Beth agree to suspend the search at midnight. Beth closes the chapter by instructing Edie to open them back up.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Minutes into Sunday, February 18, 2018, Beth finds Edie's John Hart living six hours west of Baton Rouge in Austin, Texas. That's also where Beth discovers Jeremy's new, much younger sister-in-law, Rachel, with curly red hair just like her big half-sister. Literally overnight, Edie—the baby of the O'Neal family by fourteen years—learns she's the oldest of a new family by a margin of seventeen years.   After daybreak, Edie shares the news with her adopted brother, Patrick, and his wife, Yvette, in Fort Worth. Everyone in the tiny loop begins falling in love with Edie's new family. She sends a message to her new baby brother's Ancestry account that Sunday night. Justin replies just as Edie and Jeremy are dozing off.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

On Monday, February 19, 2018, Edie reads the first communication from her newly discovered biological family, sent overnight by her baby brother on the West Coast. "I am excited to meet you and help you figure out more about your family and history," a surprised Justin writes. John, their father, was a politically active Vietnam vet/grad student at LSU when Edie was conceived, explains Justin, who was raised by his mother and stepfather; he visited John growing up. "I see and am in touch with him regularly," Justin mentions, "so I can ask questions for you."   Edie replies that Monday evening with primers about her life and her nascent search for whomever their father hooked up with in Baton Rouge in early 1970. She and Jeremy are already in bed when Justin replies at the stroke of midnight.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

At 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, February 20, 2018, Edie learns that John—who happens to be spending time with Justin and his family near Seattle—is equally surprised to find out that he had an older child. While John was happy to talk with his eldest, Justin noted, "His memory isn't always solid due to his age and life history." Edie soon replies with news of "happy tears" in her house, and asks about contacting their little sister, Rachel, who was an adult when she met Justin in 2007. Ducky and her two eldest (biological) children learn about Edie's discoveries.   Justin emails a 2,228-word email that Jeremy dubs the Manifestbro. Amid the myriad, jaw-dropping revelations is news that "Rachel and John do not communicate directly with each other," by her choice. We learn John spent much of the 1970s and ‘80s in and out of prison; Patrick describes him as "some kind of pot saint." Initially in awe and dumbfounded at how to respond, Edie tells Justin that their exchanges have motivated her to more vigorously explore her maternal Ancestry matches, in the hopes of finding a name that might jog John's memory.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

This chapter opens where Chapter 1 does: predawn Wednesday, February 21, 2018, with Edie discovering photos of her paternal family. Justin explains how he helped John with his introductory email to Edie because their father "has a very difficult time typing, organizing his thoughts, and staying on topic." John writes that "the only probable partner" is a woman named Fran Poray, though he's unsure of the surname's spelling. John explains that Fran left Baton Rouge for Paris to wed her fiancé, who then ditched her. An embarrassed Fran returned to the States, and dispatched a friend to ask John if he'd have her back, all while John suffered abuse from local police for his activism.   Edie and Beth unsuccessfully search LSU yearbooks for Fran that Wednesday afternoon. Minutes before midnight, Edie sends her first in-depth message to her birth father.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

John stays up nearly five hours—until predawn Thursday, February 22, 2018—to respond with a mangled, meandering, and occasionally disturbing 2,500-word email. Edie learns about the phonetic spelling Por-shay from John, who requests discretion, as Fran might not be the one. The hearing-impaired pacifist was fragged in Vietnam, years after serving as a teenage missionary in 1964 British Guyana, we discover.   That same Thursday, Edie and Beth resume their search for Fran, which kicks into high gear once Beth realizes she hasn't searched for the name Portier. Minutes later, Frances Portier, a 1965 graduate of a Baton Rouge high school, sure as hell looks like she could be Edie's birth mother. Patrick flatly tells his baby sister, "That's your Mom." With the help of Fran's photo-filled Facebook profile, Beth and Edie soon create a potential narrative of how the pregnancy, birth, and adoption went down. It's made even more plausible by a dearth of Fran pics from the time she would've been showing a baby bump, which happened to coincide with Fran and her mother "touring Europe" for most of 1970.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

On the morning of Friday, February 23, 2018, we learn John confirmed that Edie and Beth indeed found his Fran. Justin offers to contact the woman, per Edie's approval. The two siblings schedule a phone call for the next day, and Edie reveals her concerns about attempting to contact someone who isn't on AncestryDNA. Jeremy deconstructs a 4,721-word email John sent overnight, and Edie begins comparing Fran's lineage—as revealed by the copious family details on her social media—to her own maternal matches on AncestryDNA.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Saturday, February 24, 2018, starts with Edie discovering John's latest overnight, four-digit-word-count email, which Jeremy uses to further decode the beautiful, damaged soul. Ahead of Edie's first phone call with her new family, Jeremy explains how she eschewed Justin's offer to serve as their father's translator, opting instead to navigate the sometimes disturbing jungle of John's words. She chooses to take on the responsibility of getting to know her father firsthand, and Jeremy takes the listener along for the insane trip.   We spend the first few minutes of the midday call getting to know Justin and his young daughter, Hadley, before they hand the phone to John. He does at least ninety percent of the talking for the remainder of the five-hour conversation. Jeremy compares the experience to the Three-eyed Raven in Game of Thrones imparting "the entire knowledge of the world at once" unto Brandon Stark. Edie has more trust in John's memory regarding Fran after their phone call, given his ability to recall copious details from decades ago. In closing, she informs John and Justin, "You are beautiful people and I love that you are in my life!"   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Edie makes Justin cry with her composition "If You Were My Mom"—words on her heart she composed years earlier—because it reminds him of things he told his mother when she was dying. John informs Edie that she and Jeremy gave him joy on the phone, and that he's proud of her. Jeremy corroborates some of John's more unbelievable stories from his time in Baton Rouge, including one involving David Duke and a bloody knife at LSU's Free Speech Alley.   We also learn that Hadley's name honors the family of Justin's stepdad, who steered an angry young Justin toward healing. February 2018 closes with Justin sending Fran an Edie-approved Facebook message, one day after Edie sends her inaugural message to her baby sister, Rachel.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Edie writes to John about the suddenly shifting priorities in her and Jeremy's life. That same evening, Edie's newfound sister replies, "I am an open person." Despite Rachel's invitation to quiz her about anything, neither Edie nor Jeremy ask about her noncommunicative status with their father.    By early March 2018, Edie and Justin have a phone call to themselves, become Facebook friends, and begin exchanging messages about Edie and Jeremy flying up there around Memorial Day. After a week of silence from Fran, Justin sends letters to two addresses Beth found. That same evening, Edie books airline tickets for an eight-day stay with the Harts in Renton, Washington, at the end of May. The chapter closes forty-eight hours ahead of a scheduled Sunday debriefing with the local O'Neals; that's when Fran responds.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Justin forwards Fran's message. Unlike Patrick, Edie takes Fran at her word. She'd been investigating her maternal DNA matches for weeks. Many of them are Eastern European, while Fran's ancestors mostly have French names. Ironically, Edie is the only one dispassionate enough to not be disappointed by Fran's answer.   John later offers another maternal candidate—the "East German" woman, whose name he can't recall. Edie feels obligated to answer all the questions her sudden introduction creates for John and his chronologically problematic memory. While he can remember precise details of past events, his timeline is irreparably shattered.   When Justin asks Edie if she'd be OK with their father joining them during her and Jeremy's upcoming stay in Renton, she enthusiastically agrees. All the while, Edie and Rachel learn more about each other and the families they grew up with. In closing, Jeremy explains how Fran's Facebook page indicates they likely dodged a bullet.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Two weeks before the Whites' trip to the Pacific Northwest, Edie receives a message from a close maternal match (estimated first or second cousin) named John Lukas, in Northwest Indiana. Edie knows they are related through his paternal grandmother, Mary, and that most of her numerous descendants remained in the Hoosier State. An exchange of several daily messages yields no clue how one of them made it down to Louisiana by 1970.   As the departure date for Washington State draws closer, so do Edie, Justin, and Rachel. Two days before her flight to SEA-TAC, John Hart emails Edie, "There is a high probability that Debbie/Deborah Abrams is your birth mother." Justin replies that he's never heard their father mention that name before.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

After landing on a gorgeous Tuesday in the Pacific Northwest, Jeremy describes the video of Edie practically pulling him through SEA-TAC's entire D terminal before finally hugging her newfound baby brother. With the three of them in Justin's kitchen, silences are displaced by the back and forth between a brother and sister finally bridging thousands of miles and decades of separation. Justin then shares a Christmas card John once created and mailed out. It features a photo of a mound of cocaine with a 1979 street value of around $250,000. We briefly meet Justin's wife, Cherish, shortly before bed after she flies in from Dallas.   Amid blooming cottonwoods creating a snow-globe effect, Justin takes his two guests hiking and sightseeing on a picture-perfect Wednesday in late May. Back in Renton, we meet Hadley, and Cherish's parents. On Thursday, Justin leads Edie and Jeremy around downtown Seattle, where they enjoy the Museum of Pop Culture's "Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds” exhibit.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Justin treats Edie and Jeremy to lunch and wine in Woodinville on Friday. Back in Renton, Justin and Edie have their first three-way communication with their baby sister, Rachel, in Austin via Skype. Edie and Jeremy cap off Friday night drinking wine with Justin and Cherish in Hadley's custom-built Japanese tea house.   Following a trip to the Seattle Museum of Flight with Hadley, Jeremy informs his new BFF's parents how—in the age of catfishing and online scams—the "ebullient little delight" (John's term) they raised had obliterated any stubborn, infinitesimal trace of doubt about them and their intentions. Justin and Edie close the chapter Saturday night by leaving to pick up John at the airport.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

We meet John and experience the challenges of someone soft-spoken like Edie attempting to converse with him in person. Jeremy awakens Sunday morning to Edie's sobbing, prompted by the terror of John's nightmares, as shared in dozens of his emails. One day before bringing him to meet her adopted aunt (Doc O'Neal's widowed sister) and cousins in the Seattle area, Edie freaks out, worried her father might ensnare someone into a conversation and take them down to one of his many dark places. After initially agreeing with Justin that perhaps John should stay behind Monday, a wave of guilt immediately results in Edie's about-face.   The Memorial Day gathering with Edie's namesake and her area family goes beautifully; John even gives the elder Edris Ann an impromptu massage for her eighty-seventh birthday. Two days later, Justin drives the two of us to the airport for a reluctant departure early Wednesday morning. After taking a break from the yet-unsolved maternal puzzle, though, Edie's ready to chase down John's latest leads.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team

Back home, in an attempt to piece together John's fractured timeline, Edie makes indirect contact with a woman who knew John during his Baton Rouge days. She shares a tale starting in San Francisco and ending with five hippies getting pulled over at 2 a.m. in Texas, where John truthfully tells the cop that he's hurrying back to the mental hospital. "They came REALLY close to finding the acid," the woman says of John's substantial business inventory. "I was SO pissed at John that I didn't want to see him any more after that."   Edie soon books a weekend trip to meet Rachel and her small family in Austin. She spends several days focusing on her new sister, which serves as a needed reset following four months of chasing John's dead leads in an attempt to solve a frustrating DNA puzzle.   Get your signed edition of The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery at LittleGirlBook.com. Follow The Little Girl on social media @littlegirlbook. Subscribe to The Little Girl Book Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.   Audio editing and production by Michael Thibodeaux and the Rep Cap team