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.

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

I'm Michael Silverblad and today it's my pleasure to have as my guest, Ethan Canaan,

whose most recent novel is Carry Me Across the Water, published by Random House.

He's the author, of Of Course of Emperor of the Air, the Palace Leaf, and for Kings and Planets.

There's one other book there.

Yeah, Blue River.

You're actually the only person who can say all those names without making a single error.

Oh, people say, the Emperor of the Air.

Well, I'm happy that's the case.

It strikes me, carry me across the water.

Is that a phrase from a hymn or where does that title come from?

No, it's an invented phrase, but it came, I was trying to think of a title for this book, and I was actually playing a song for my daughter on the piano, a old, a song called Shenandoah, you know.

And it's in a book of children's songs

called Go In and Out the Window,

and they come with these illustrations from some museum,

I forget, I don't know if it's the Met,

but it looks like it.

...