Navigating the Stormy Life of R.J. Reynolds Jr.

It started as an investigative exercise filled with suspense. It’s always fascinating when decades-old papers on once-famous people turn up, and I’ll never forget the excitement of stepping back in time to weave all the pieces of a long forgotten story together. The subject was the late tobacco heir, R.J. “Dick” Reynolds Jr. As I started to relive his life through exclusive, private material and musty, yellowed papers and photos, the information I had my hands on led to an even more twisted tale. To unravel it, I visited dozens of libraries, courthouses, and archives in numerous states and countries. Peeling back the layers on Dick Reynolds’s life started out as a slow, methodical examination of fact and speculation and transformed into a roller coaster ride of action. There were unsolved mysteries about Dick’s death, but his wild escapades in life became just as interesting. I found myself following Dick through a whirlwind of drinking, parties, world travel, and unfathomable luxury, and I lost all sense of the value of a dollar as I documented Dick’s activities.

Dick was a complicated man. Some days I wanted to be like him—to live in his time, to have the money, access, and resources to explore and invent the way he did. He was a joy to be around, loved by all who didn’t know him that well. I wished I could have been at all the soirees in Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific with Dick and had the chance to enjoy his generous spirit. Other days I was utterly frustrated with my guy. How could he squander his potential and any chance of a healthy relationship with his family when he was so fortunate to have all that he had? Throughout his life, he tossed professional and personal opportunities into the sea, where he could be found, sailing away from his obligations. While I knew long before I started writing that there were suspicious individuals involved when Dick died and his fortune went missing, I found myself blaming Dick as well for his tragic end. He had a thousand chances to make it all turn out differently and he threw those chances away.

Even as I knew how the story would end, I longed for Dick to overcome his demons, learn from his mistakes, make amends to his children, and finish all of the pioneering endeavors he started--aviation with Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh, horse-racing, sailing and yacht-racing, political ambitions with FDR, Truman, and the Democratic Party, history-making investing and business deals, ground-breaking conservation efforts, celebrated philanthropy—and turn it all around. I never wanted the adventure to end and I never wanted anyone to suffer for it. But they would, and Dick and his legacy would suffer most of all. Kid Carolina is the exemplar of the familiar morality tale that teaches money can’t buy happiness. By the time the work on this complex biography was done, I was grateful for the lessons it taught me.