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Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good-nosed to bird?

It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

And today's show is long in the making.

Marissa Silver, my guest, was originally going to be on Bookworm on September 11th,

and you know what happened that day, that year, and so the show never aired.

Now it's four books later.

She's written a spectacular novel called Mary Coyne.

It's a emotionally rich and devastating book about history, American history, the destiny of

exposure, the way we've become icons and celebrities, and in particular, it's about

a photograph that has become iconic to the sense of

what America was during the Depression.

Can you tell about the photograph?

Absolutely.

It's called Migrant Mother, and it's taken by Dorothea Lang. And it's a photograph that many people will recognize from their lessons in history, if not other things.

But it's a woman holding a baby surrounded by two of her other children who are facing away from the camera,

and they're in a very ramshackle-looking tent.

And the woman's face is sort of, she's looking off to the side,

and she has an expression of sort of both desperation and grit at the same time.

...