Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Apparently, back in the day, people used to ride horses off big, tall platforms into bodies of water.

And this would be an attraction, like watching trapeze artists or monster trucks or whatever today.

It's called horse diving, and it's what a young Cherokee girl named Two Feathers

does for a living in today's book, When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky, by author Margaret

Verbal.

In this interview with NPR's R. Shapiro, Verbal talks about correcting the historical record

when it comes to American Indians, her mixed feelings about nostalgia and the

charm of a now defunct zoo. It was just a magical place. That park zoo was a little gym in a world that,

you know, was extremely imperfect. And she explains to Ari that, yeah, people used to dive horses there.

Here's the interview.

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you get your podcasts. Just south of Nashville, there is a sign in a suburban neighborhood.

It's a historical marker describing an amusement park and zoo

that existed a century ago on that site. That park in 1926 is the setting for the new novel

when two feathers fell from the sky. It's by Margaret Verbal, whose earlier work made her a finalist

for the Pulitzer Prize. Welcome to all things considered. Thank you. It's so nice to be here.

Thanks for having me on.

I was most of the way through reading this book when my producer alerted me to the fact that Glendale Zoo was a real place.

Tell us about your connection to this piece of almost forgotten history.

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