Hearby Monsters is a podcast about facing the unknown. I, uh, I start to float, float away from the earth. Have you ever smoked crack before? We're all kind of frantically searching for meaning. They have the neurotransmitters. I think we're all jugglers in some way. Yo, we're not broken. Crazy delinquents. We're in our last day, young man. Listen to Hear Be Monsters.

The podcast about the unknown.

On the KCRW iTunes page.

Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannon Foundation.

Boots.

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timber.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

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

Today, my guest is Ryan Gaddis.

His novel, All Involved, has just come out in paperback from Echo Press.

And it's an important book.

It's a book that was written, what is it, some 23 years after the events that took place in Los Angeles in 1992.

Ryan was not living in Los Angeles at the time. It's a reconstitution in the way.

He spoke to artists, to gang members, to nurses, to police, to people who were involved, not just in the riots,

but in those parts of the riots that were taking advantage of the mayhem that was occurring in the wake of the Rodney King decision.

Pent up anger got expended.

It became the occasion for a lot of shooting and retribution within the gang communities.

Can you tell me how you entered those communities to be able to write about them?

You're not making a nice picture.

...