Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. All right, I'm sorry to be a nerd that, like, quotes William Faulkner, but while listening to today's interviews, I did have that one line of his in my head. That's maybe overplayed, but still, you know, it's the one that goes, the past is never dead. It's not even past, because both books today tell stories that take

place throughout these long stretches of time. In a bit, we'll hear from Daniel Mason, who's got

this wildly ambitious novel that Kirk is called multitudinous and magical in its review.

But first, an interview from a couple years ago with Barbara Kingsolver. Before her Pulitzer

Prize-winning novel, Demon Copperhead, she wrote a book called Unsheltered,

and it uses the Civil War to look at post-Trump America.

But she tells former NPR host Lulu Garcia-Navarro that the book isn't about leaders.

It's instead about people's willingness to be led.

In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.

Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors.

On our new show, Sources and Methods, NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people

helping you understand why distant events matter here at home.

Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Barbara Kingsolver is the best-selling author of the Poisonwood Bible and the Lacuna.

After six years, she has a new novel which tackles the divisions in America that have been around for a long time and remain unhealed.

The book is called Unsheltered, and she joins us now from W.E.H.C. in Emery, Virginia.

It is my great pleasure to have you on the program.

Thanks.

This book is done in alternating chapters, set in two different time periods, one just after the Civil War in 1871 and the other in 2016 America.

Tell me why those periods and what do you think they have in common.

I wanted to write about how people behave when their world seems to be coming apart.

And why do we keep trying old solutions to new problems when it looks like they're not working anymore?

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