Meet the Darwins: An Interview with Deborah Heiligman

During Darwin’s lifetime, his best-selling book was The Formation of Vegetable Mold through the Actions of Worms with Observations on Their Habits. Did you actually read the entire book?
No, I did not read the whole thing.

Stop the presses. This is an SLJ scoop: Darwin author confesses she failed to finish scientist’s best seller.
I did not read the whole book about worms. [Laughter.] The title was almost enough.

Portrait by Matt Peyton. Monkey by Dorling Kindersley/Getty Images.

Yeah, I bet.
The science scared me at times, and I very much did not want it to bog the reader down. So I worked very, very hard at, I hope, telling just the right amount.

Your book is the first to look at Darwin’s life through his love for his wife, Emma. How did you come up with that idea?
My husband writes about science.

We should explain that your husband is Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jonathan Weiner.
About seven, eight years ago, Jon said to me, “You know, Charles Darwin’s wife was religious. She loved him very much, and she was afraid that he would go to hell and they wouldn’t be together for eternity.” Literally, had fireworks gone off at that moment, I would have not been surprised. I said, “Has anything been written about this?” And he said, “I’ve never seen anything.” So I knew I had a book to write.

What’s the biggest misconception about Darwin’s work?
People still think that somehow we evolved from monkeys. Darwin thought that apes and people had a common ancestor way back when and that the tree of life branched out. We are definitely related to monkeys, but we didn’t come from a monkey. Even though that’s really just a technicality, it’s what gets a lot of people crazy about evolution.

Has writing this book given you any insight on how science and religion can coexist peacefully?
That was a big reason why I wanted to write the book. I believe there are these misconceptions, and if people would just talk about them, like Charles and Emma did, they’d find they have much more in common than not. What really upsets people is that they think Darwin was an atheist and that everybody who believes in evolution believes the same thing. If I were devout, that would horrify me as well.

What did Darwin believe?
Darwin really didn’t know if there was a God or not. His belief fluctuated. He did not have the Creator being part of creation in the first edition of The Origin of Species, and he put God in the subsequent editions. There is such beauty in the way that Darwin and other scientists look at the world, and there is such beauty in the way religious people look at the world—and they are not mutually exclusive. That’s what I feel Charles and Emma’s marriage shows.

Is that the message you hope young readers will take away from your book?
It’s my dream. Seriously, I was just saying to my husband last night, “Oh God, if people could read my book and come away with that message, I will have achieved my dream.”