Gretchen Cherington Revisits the Century-Old Scandal That Nearly Destroyed Geo. A. Hormel & Company
Gretchen Cherington
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy
PORTLAND, ME, UNITED STATES, May 26, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- In The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy, Gretchen Cherington uncovers a gripping 1920s embezzlement scandal that nearly collapsed Geo. A. Hormel & Company, while investigating her grandfather’s controversial role in the company’s rise and sudden fall. Blending true crime with personal reckoning, she reveals how ambition, loyalty, and myth can shape and distort the legacies of powerful men.
Gretchen Cherington is an award-winning memoirist and former executive advisor whose work examines power, legacy, and the courage to speak the truth. Raised among some of the twentieth century’s most influential poets and writers, Cherington developed an early understanding of storytelling and influence, insight she later brought to a distinguished 35-year career advising top executives worldwide and teaching in the executive education programs at Harvard, Columbia, and Dartmouth. Widely respected for helping leaders confront hard truths, she is also a dedicated mentor to women navigating corporate leadership.
Her memoir The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy won the 2024 Maine Literary Prize, the Axiom Best Business Book Award, and the Best Indie Book Award. Her debut, Poetic License, was a Finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award and a runner-up for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her essays have appeared in popular outlets including HuffPost, Lit Hub, Electric Lit, Yankee, among others. Her “Maine Roustabout” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives in Portland, Maine, and is currently at work on her first novel.
In this exclusive interview, Cherington discusses the inspiration and true story behind The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry.
Tell us about The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy.
In 1901, my paternal grandfather, Alpha LaRue (“A.L.”) Eberhart was recruited by George A. Hormel to build an enduring meat company in southern Minnesota, far from the industrial center of Chicago. Together, over the first twenty years, they built Geo. A. Hormel & Company into an iconic brand. It was a story I trusted. Until I began to question it.
In The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy, I take you inside the rise of a company, and the unraveling of a myth. At the center are three powerful men: a visionary founder, a brilliant executive, and a trusted comptroller who confessed to embezzling a staggering sum that nearly brought the company to its knees. But the deeper I looked, the more complicated the truth became.
Was my grandfather complicit, or was he sacrificed to protect something bigger? Was George Hormel the “bastard” my father forcefully described?
In scale both intimate and grand, and informed by my consulting work with hundreds of top executives, I dig deep to understand what drove these powerful men behind closed doors: their temperaments, opportunities, blind spots, and motivations. Set against the sweeping backdrop of early American industry, this is more than a story of scandal. It’s a search for truth buried beneath generations of belief that forced me to confront not only my family’s past, but the uncomfortable reality of how power protects itself, and who ultimately pays the price.
What inspired you to write The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy?
As a kid, I listened to larger-than-life stories about my paternal grandfather, A.L. Eberhart, his recruitment by George Hormel away from the dominant Swift & Company in Chicago, his stellar industry reputation, and his extensive group of friends. I took the poetic stories on blind faith.
Working with hundreds of corporate leaders, I quickly saw that none of them were either all good or all bad. I saw cracks opening in my family's simplistic accounts and wanted to know what really happened to the grandfather I had never known in person.
Through research in historical documents, including A.L.’s personal letters, three expansive visits to southern Minnesota, and interviews with dozens of individuals, I hoped to inspire my readers not to embrace the mythical qualities of our leaders—whether familial, corporate, religious, or political—which often muddy the full truth of who they are.
How did your background and experience influence your writing? Why did you think memoir was the appropriate genre?
I grew up in a literary family, listening to the cadence of my poet father and his close friends, from Robert Frost to Anne Sexton to James Dickey, and absorbing the rhythms of their storytelling. At forty, I began to face the painful truth that my own experience of my family didn’t always jibe with the stories told about them.
My career with executives often required me to speak truth to power, as they sought to change how they led their companies. I turned that skill to examining the powerful men in my family and saw how my own story intersected with theirs and is at the center of both my books. Memoir was the appropriate genre for Poetic License (2020), and my latest, The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy (2023).
I am interested in the emotional truth of a story and often find it nested within a collection of facts and felt experiences, whether mine or others’.
What is one message you would like readers to remember?
All forms of trauma are real, and, in families can play out through generations. Also true in companies. Interrogating our histories—while painful and challenging—can set us free, when we are ready. It is only through facing our shared traumas that we can reconcile them.
The shame and mythology surrounding the Hormel embezzlement was still palpable in Austin, Minnesota, a hundred years later, while facing the legend of my grandfather, we now better understood what happened.
Purchasing the Book
The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy--A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry has received positive reviews from well-known literary organizations, authors, and reviewers around the world. Kirkus Reviews writes, “A dazzling account that deftly combines crime, drama, history, and introspective remembrance.” In addition, New York Times’ bestseller, Dr. Marshall Goldsmith writes, “Beautifully written with an attention to the details of history, Gretchen creates a tale that brings the intriguing facts of management, corporate greed, and the fate of Geo. A. Hormel & Company to life.”
The book is available for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, Kobo, Nook, and other online bookstores in eBook, paperback and audiobook formats. Readers are encouraged to purchase their copy today: https://www.amazon.com/Butcher-Embezzler-Fall-Guy-Industry-ebook/dp/B0B8H5WK3G/
To connect with Gretchen and learn more about her work, visit: www.gretchencherington.com. You can also find her on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.
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