Shawn Gude, "American Socialist"

Have you been to the home in Terre Haute, Indiana?

Absolutely, yes.

Yeah, I hadn't been before I started.

Actually, that's not true.

I had been once before I started writing the book.

But it was, you know, I went on a tour.

The tour guide there is this amazing woman, Alison Dirk.

and gives extraordinary tours.

So everyone who lives in the Midwest or is passing through Indiana should absolutely go to the home.

Yeah, it's Debs' house.

It's restored to what it was like in the 1890s when the house was first built.

And so you really get a good sense of the kind of environment that he was living in with his wife there.

Yeah, it was a kind of way to nerd out, really, when I went there.

Anyone, I think, who's interested in history generally or interested in a person, it's one thing.

And it's pretty extraordinary to actually be able to read someone's letters.

Debs didn't really have a diary, but to be able to read someone's letters to really get a sense of history.

him as a person, that was extraordinary.

But to actually go to his house and walk up the stairs that he walked up and saw where he slept and go to his attic where he would dry out at the mushrooms that he would hunt for because he was a big mushroom hunter, that was pretty amazing.

And the Debs Foundation does a really good job of bringing that history to life.

So it's a special place.

Where were his parents from?

His parents were from France, Eastern France.

And yeah, they moved.

Basically, they had kind of almost, you know, almost a storybook romance.

His dad was... was set to inherit this prosperous business that his dad had, and Debs' dad fell in love with a worker at the prosperous business they were at.