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, Michael Ondaja, whose most recent novel is De Visadero.

It's published by Knopf.

Of course, Michael Andesha is the author of

the English patient and Anil's Ghost in the Skin of a Lion, running in the family, his memoir,

coming through slaughter, as well as books of poetry most recently, handwriting and the cinnamon peeler, a book of

interviews with the superb film editor of Walter Merch called The Conversations Walter Merch

and the Art of Editing Film.

Now, I'm interested particularly in the shape shape of DeVisadero because it tells, in a sense, two stories.

And I wondered how that shape emerged or evolved in the course of the writing.

Well, it began with the landscape of Petaluma in northern California, and then specifically

a farm on that, in that landscape.

And it was people originally by a woman or a young woman, and the scene with the horse that attacks her was really the first scene I wrote.

But later on, gradually, when I went back to it, there were two girls.

There was not just Claire, but Claire and Anna.

So I had this kind of nuclear, seemingly nuclear family on this farm, you know, the father,

the two girls and the hired hand, a young teenager called Coop.

...