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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, it's my pleasure

to be speaking to Louise Erdrich, the author of The Painted Drum. This is her most recent book.

It's published by Harper Collins.

Recently, she also published Four Souls, and she, of course, began with love medicine, continued

with the Beat Queen and Tracks, and all of these novels have been part of an ongoing

saga of the Ojibwe people from whom she descends.

It's kind of an amazing saga, and the painted drum is a particularly good place to begin

because it's a novel.

It's her first novel, I think, that's set in current times.

It cuts across three generations for people who've been reading

her all along, those who want to know about the origins of the formidable Fleur-Pillager,

we'll find them out here and find out why she is so indomitable. And I wanted to begin by asking, Louise,

you say that this book came over a very long period of time, I believe, around nine years.

Why was it different from the others? Well, first of all, hello, I'm so glad to be talking to

you and to your listeners. Hi. The book did start a long time ago, and part of it is set in New Hampshire, which is the first time I've ever set anything in the East. And I wrote that part of it, I think it was in 1989.

And so I started it way back when and added to it incrementally just over through the 90s.

I would put a piece here and a piece there, and slowly it began to fit together.

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