You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hello and welcome to bookworm.

This is Michael Silverblatt.

Today my guest is Susan Strait, whose most recent book, The Get in Place, has just

come out in paperback from Double Day Anchor Press.

It joins her other two novels, Blacker Than a Thousand Midnights, and I've been in Saro's Kitchen and licked out all the pots.

All three of them are in paperback from Double Day Anchor.

They're published in hardcover by Hyperion, and her first book, Aquabooke, A Novel in Stories, is available for milkweed editions.

Well, the Getting Place has more plot than any of them.

How is that? How did that come to be? I told you I was going to work on that because my poor editor, after Black at a Thousand Midnight, she said, you know, these guys, they're standing around talking, and I really like it, but could they get in the car and go do something? So I thought everybody should do something in this. Well, plus I'm older now. I'm 36, and I got the three kids, and I like the narrative that propels you and keeps you going when you're staying up late at night to read. I like that a lot. Well, I have the feeling that she had sent you Jamie Lee Burke. I remember the last time I saw you. I love James Lee Burke. She sent me, she did send me those. And I'm a big fan of James Lee Burke. I'm also a big fan of Michael

Connolly. I really like the way his plots are set in motion. And I mean, I worked very, very hard

to make sure that this could have history, the history of the Tulsa Rides, but also to have not a

mystery novel type field, but to have something that had to be unraveled that was mixed in

with the family history and mixed in with the land.

And I like the way that's done in a lot of mystery books.

Well, it's interesting because, you know, many writers take on a mystery or thriller

form in order to give their narrative drive, and it doesn't come. You really have mastered that.

I'm glad to hear you say that because it was the scariest thing for me to make sure that I had done it

the way that I would want to read it.

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