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 Santa Monica, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today I'm happy to have as my guest, Geraldine Brooks,

whose most recent book is People of the Book,

which I read and enjoyed and felt enthusiasm for.

And now it's on the way top of many best-seller lists around the country.

And listeners know that that's not usually what happens to the books that I choose.

Geraldine, did you expect it?

Oh, good grief. No, Michael. It's a great thrill for me. It's the first time I've, you know, really had a straight out of the gate bestseller. What's more typical for my books is that people read them and talk about them and then

gradually and slowly the audience for them has built.

But this time it was a little different, which is nice.

Well, the last book, March, won the Pulitzer Prize.

It's based on little women.

And famously in that book, Mr. March, the father is away, a chaplain in the Civil

War. And the book March was about what he learns about God and battle and faith and politics

and how to live in that circumstance.

And the first book, too, has its center, a catastrophe.

It's called Year of Wonders.

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