Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

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 need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today my guest is David Van, the author of Caribou Island, his first novel.

Some great novels are famous for their dramatic descriptions of how a

marriage falls apart. Think Anna Karenina, Madame Bolvery, or more recently, Revolutionary Road

and Malcolm Lowry's Great Under the Volcano. Like under the volcano, Carrabo Island takes

place in an exotic setting., exotic for us, but not

for David Van, who was born in Alaska.

Without the eyes of a despairing couple, what does Alaska look and feel like before direness takes hold of it?

It's a magnificent place and I think that it really, your question is good because I think it really is a giant mirror.

And I think that people who go to Alaska or to wilderness to escape find that it's the worst possible place to go

to try to escape. So Alaska on its own, before viewed in that way, is just absolutely beautiful.

It's unbelievable. I spent my childhood there and still go back every year. And it's so varied.

I grew up in southeast Alaska where it's rainforest.

And it's such a thick rainforest that as I was running along as a kid,

I could actually fall through the floor and hit a second floor and disappear completely.

...