Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. If you were to be reductive and dismissive

of books written in stream of consciousness, you could say that it's showy, that it's style for style's sake,

but in the new novel Mule Boy, there's a reason why it feels like one long sentence. The novel is about a boy who works as a minor in Pennsylvania in 1929 when something goes wrong.

And in this interview with Empire Scott Simon, author Andrew Krivak talks about wanting to write a book that communicated orality,

that sounded more like a guy telling you his life story than a writer writing one.

More on that and his complicated feelings about the mining industry up ahead.

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Mule Boy is a novel told in what may look like one long searing sentence. Picking up a New Year's

Day, 1929, when Andro Prak, 13-year-old son of Slovak immigrants,

begins work as what's called a mule boy in a Pennsylvania coal mine. That very day,

there is a collapse in the mine, and Andro survives, but does he ever recover?

Andrew Krivak, the author, a National Book Award finalist, joins us now.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Thank you, Scott.

Appreciate the invitation.

Let me ask you to read from your book to take us into this world of the mine.

Sure.

And when the miner had brought to the surface all the coal, he was expected to mine in a day, he went home back to the patch to see his wife and his family and to take a bath

and to eat a supper. Though the mines were dirty, they were no dirtier than a shop floor

or a tannery or a rail yard and no miner stayed dirty longer than was necessary. The minor worked, but he knew

...