Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation. Boots! Where would we be without books? Where would we be without good? No, Timberd. It's a rhetorical question, sir, but where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Today, my guest is Tony D'Souza.

He's the author of a book that has been published directly in paperback called Mule, a paperback

original. It's a novel of moving weight. It's his third novel. Now, as many who have read

Tony DeSuzza's first two books may know it's a departure. It's a novel that is about

the Great Recession. Those of us who are uncertain what to call it will accept for the moment

calling it the Great Recession. And what was it you discovered, Tony, and sitting down to this?

Well, this is definitely, can I just say it's an honor to be here. This book is definitely a departure

from my first two. My first two were multicultural books with foreign settings, and they allowed me to

explore questions of race and identity.

And Mule really allows me to explore a personal experience in the sense of the last few years

what my wife and I have gone through in having our two children, and my wife was laid off from her job.

And I'm a freelancer, and I live off novel advances.

And freelancing for me fell off a cliff in 2008 when we were having our first child.

And the recession for me has been a very frightening, difficult time.

And writing a mule allowed me to put all of those emotions into fiction.

The character here whose name is James Nasseter,

his wife, who's Jamaican, has a friend she went to high school with,

who is a grower of drugs in Northern California,

and he discovers that he could sell them and drive them around,

be a mule. And this is going to allow readers to see what's inside the drug-dealing world.

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