Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed.

Or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today I am happy to have as my guest, Barbara Kingsolver, whose new novel The Locuna

has recently been published by Harper's.

She's the author as well, of course, of the bean trees, the Poisonwood Bible,

the very popular book of nonfiction Animal, Vegetable Miracle, A Year of Food Life.

And this is a very unusual book

in that everyone says

that to write the life of a writer

is, you know, that a writer's life is a very dull thing

involved with papers and notes.

The writer that Barbara Kingsolver has written, has invented for this book,

the Lecuna, is a man named Harrison William Shepard.

He is the author of three novels, although his bibliographer says he wrote two.

And he has lived through some of the most precarious and epic defining events in North American history.

He was born in America.

He is raised in Mexico, and he enters the lives of Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera. He is their

secretary when a fleeing Trotsky trying to escape Stalin comes to live with the Rivera couple.

...