Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. We've got something a little different today, instead of the usual Friday two-fur. Lorn Groff is on the pod. If you're listening to an NPR book's podcast, I doubt I've got to introduce her, but just in case, she's the author of Fates and Furies, Florida, Matrix, all of which were nominated for the National Book Award.

And as you'll hear, we had this really great conversation about, well, a lot of stuff.

You know, writing, dying, climate change, the usefulness of fiction, and more.

She's got a new book out now. It's called The Vaster Wilds.

It takes place in Jamestown, 1610. This was not a great time for the colonists in Jamestown,

you know. Scholars call it the starving times. The Powhatan people have gotten the colony

under siege and everyone is hungry or sick or dying or dead.

We'll hear more about what entranced her about this time period after the break.

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I actually met up with Lauren Graf for this interview at a library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The folks there were kind of enough to pull out a few editions of the narrative of the captivity

and restoration of Mrs. Mary Rawlinson. It's a first-hand account of Mary Rawlinson's kidnapped

and captured by the native people. And Lauren starts off the interview talking about how

captivity narratives

...