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 honored to have as my guest, Louise Erdrich, who is talking to me from the NPR

studios in Manhattan.

She's the author, most recently, of the Master Butcher's Singing Club,

published by Harper Collins. But you have probably been following many of these people,

at least these settings in her earlier novels, which include Love Medicine, the Beat Queen,

tracks, the Bingo Palace, Tales of Burning Love,

the Antelope Wife, and the Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse.

This book is set largely in Argus, North Dakota, and it is concerned with the German ancestry

of Louise's family.

Louise is a mixed background.

Her mother is Ojibwe and French.

Her father is German-American.

And this is, I believe, the first book to focus on the German background of the family. Did it provide any special

difficulties, Louise? Hi, and I'm so glad to be talking to you. Did it present special

difficulties? I didn't really feel as though I was making some sort of departure. I guess

when you're, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, when, because I grow up, um, I've grown

...