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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Tenderberg.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt.

This is Bookworm, and today my guest is Carol Muskie Dukes.

Some of my listeners will know her as a novelist, as an essayist. I know her primarily as a poet. We've spoken about her poetry again and again. This book, Blue Rose, published by Penguin, I think is her best book.

I suspect that she thinks so too, because in the acknowledgments, she thanks all of the people,

friends, advisors, or sympathizers, and the long journey to Blue Rose. Do you regard

Blue Rose this book as a destination book? I've never heard it describe that way before, but now as you're

saying it, probably because you have such certainty in what you're saying, I think I do agree.

It has a sense of a rival about it.

It really does.

Well, what's marvelous is that it's a life book.

It begins essentially when your daughter is born, and it ends with your daughter as a grown woman,

a scientist. It in between considers in many different aspects the lives of accomplished women and what it takes for a woman to be accomplished as you are

accomplished, as your daughter is accomplished. We're talking about a book that traces the

accomplishment of women.

There are moments in this book of such extreme sacrifice.

...