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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

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 welcome to Bookworm.

Today my guest is Emma Donahue, and her most recent book is called Frog Music.

She is perhaps best known for her last and wildly best-selling novel room.

And this one is a historical novel and what's more a crime novel.

And your first crime novel?

Yes, I've had bad and bloody things happen in previous books,

but this is the first time I wanted to enter into that particular sort of contract with the reader.

I may have other themes and interesting characters going on,

but I promise I will lead you through the detection of a crime.

And what was the first thing that you saw that drew your attention to this

story, which takes place, I believe, in the 1870s? Yes, in 1876, a young woman called Jenny

Bonnet got shot through a window of a really grubby little saloon bar on the outskirts of San Francisco.

And she was the local character anyway.

She was constantly getting arrested

under San Francisco's anti-cross dressing laws

...