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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and welcome to Bookworm.

As my guest, I have one of the beloved writers in American life.

She has been on the show, going back to its very origins, around 32 years ago.

It's a pleasure to talk to Louisa Urge Rich once again about her marvelous book,

The Sentence, which is published by Harper Collins.

Now, Louise, this book seems to come out of thin air. It's a ghost story mystery, and I know of nothing else in your work that's like it.

How did you come upon it?

Oh, well, first of all, I have to say what a vast pleasure it is to talk to you again.

I'm smiling over here in Minneapolis and I'm excited to talk about this book.

I got this idea a while ago and I kept trying to write it. Bookstores seem haunted.

Bookstores, maybe not the new, brightly lighted bookstores that are wonderful as well.

But for me, it's the cramped, eccentric, the bookstore that has the, the books that go up to the ceiling

and that you find in small town sometimes or tucked away in corners of the city that you've

never experienced, those are the kind of bookst that you've never experienced,

those are the kind of bookstores that I feel are my favorites

...