Originally known for starting Nadia Cakes out of her home kitchen, these days she’s known more for her books than her bakery.

Her latest rom-com, “The Night We Met,” hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list one week after it was released.

It’s no surprise to her vast fan base. Jimenez writes witty, meet-cute romance books that also tackle real life issues like alcoholism, family trauma and caring for a loved one with dementia. And all her stories are set in or tinged by Minnesota, Jimenez’ adopted home state. What’s not to love?

Jimenez joins Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas this week, for the first time ever, to talk about the oft-maligned romance genre, how changing views of sex and marriage and masculinity are reflected in her books, why Jimenez always include a content warning before the story and why getting people to read anything these days feels like a win.

She also deftly handles a lightning round with Miller, including the romance novel she thinks should be added to the curriculum for all Minnesota college and the cupcake from Nadia Cakes she would bring to a roundtable of famous authors.

Guest:

• Abby Jimenez is a prolific romance writer. Her latest book is “The Night We Met.”

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She tried to write that story. But it wasn’t doing that “magical thing that lets you know you have art,” she says on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “It was a good idea. But the book wasn’t booking, as my students say.”

And then 2020 happened. A million Americans died from COVID, including some of Jones’ friends. Then George Floyd was murdered. Protests rocked the country. Jones started to wonder if writing a novel even mattered. And then she got sick with an autoimmune disorder.

She started to write again just to soothe herself.

The new story “kept me company the same way reading a book may keep someone company,” she tells host Kerri Miller. “I loved [main characters] Annie and Niecy. I was eager to see what would become of them. I was delighted with the minor characters. I enjoyed visiting with them — asking them the questions of their heart. And asking the same questions of my own heart.”

The result is “Kin,” Jones newest novel, and by all accounts, this story is doing that “magical thing” that good books do. It’s already an Oprah Book Pick and a New York Times Bestseller.

Jones talks about all of this and more with Miller — including the power of female friends and the grief of family lost and found — on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

Guest:

• Tayari Jones is a professor of writing at Emory University and the author of four novels, including “Kin,” her newest book, which was published in February.

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During their discussion, Engel talked about the expansion of executive power in the United States and how that threatens democracy. He also addressed the current military operation in Iran. His forthcoming book, “Seeking Monsters to Destroy: How America Goes to War, From Washington to Biden and Beyond,” is a history of how American leaders have identified enemies, and how their description alters the way Americans fight.

In her new book, professor and writer Daisy Hernandez says that legal definition is just one layer of a complicated idea. Citizenship is really about who gets to belong.

“We are citizens of the stories we tell,” she writes. “We belong to the stories we scribe about democracy and authoritarianism, about borders and neighbors, about love and grief and one another.”

Hernandez joins host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas for a remarkably relevant discussion about her book, “Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth.” She uses her own family’s immigration story as a starting point to examine how class, race, sexism and nationalism all impact who gets to claim U.S. citizenship. She and Miller also talk about how citizenship has evolved over the course of American history, often becoming a proxy for race.

Guest:

• Daisy Hernandez is a writer and a professor at Northwestern University. Her new book is “Citizenship: Notes on an American Myth.” Her previous books include “The Kissing Bug” and a memoir, “A Cup of Water Under My Bed.”

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The acclaimed writer, already graced with a Pulitzer and a National Book Award, returns this month with a collection of short stories, taken from the past 20 years of her work.

“Python’s Kiss” includes both previously published and brand new tales. Each is distinct. They include the aunt with four wedding dresses, a young girl who consoles a lovesick dog, immigrant farmers with a tenuous grip on sanity. There are also two speculative stories set in a corporately owned afterlife, stories that Erdrich says make more sense in today’s A.I. environment than they did when she wrote them.

Each chapter is accompanied by specially commissioned artwork by Erdrich’s daughter, Aza Erdrich Abe. Both women join Kerri Miller in the studio for this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, to talk about the writing, the collaboration and the surprises in “Python’s Kiss.”

Guests:

• Louise Erdrich is the award-winning author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. She is also the owner of Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, a small independent bookstore. Her new book is “Python’s Kiss,” a collection of short stories.
• Aza Erdrich Abe is an artist who collaborated on illustrations for “Python’s Kiss.” She’s also been the cover artist for her mom since 2012.

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Terry Tempest Williams’ new book, “The Glorians,” wrestles with that unraveling — the pull of one strand could undo the pattern that weaves us all together.

And yet, as host Kerri Miller says, this book is unexpectedly consoling too.

William writes this from her home in the Utah desert: “I can bear witness with awe and gratitude, translating what I see and feel, and then share it as an offering of joy or bewilderment or love.”

Williams joins Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about glorians — those small moments of awe that anchor our attention — and how to live wide open, holding nothing back, even in the face of despair.

Guest:

• Terry Tempest Williams is an award-winning author of seventeen books of creative nonfiction, including the environmental classic, “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place.” She also teaches at Harvard School of Divinity. Her new book is, “The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary.”

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Long revered for their mythical presence, megaliths woo both curiosity seekers and die-hard enthusiasts. Fiona Robertson falls into that second camp. She was captivated by Britain’s ancient stones from an early age. When she met her husband, Stephen, a shared love of megaliths drew them together.

And it was the megaliths who comforted her and gave her room to grieve when Stephen was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Robertson’s new book, “Stone Lands,” is part homage to the grandeur and mystery of megaliths and part memoir of a wrenching loss. This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Robertson shares her love and her consolation with Kerri Miller, as they verbally explore Britain’s megaliths together.

Guest:

• Fiona Robertson is a writer and dedicated stone-seeker. Her new book is titled, “Stone Lands: A Journey of Darkness and Light through Britain’s Ancient Places.”

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A product of both of those worlds, Mueenuddin sees himself as a translator of sorts. He intimately knows both U.S. and Pakistani culture — particularly the more rural, faintly feudal villages in southern Pakistan, where he now farms. He knows the distinctives and the overlaps between East and West, between rich and poor, between scarcity and comfort.

He’s channeled all of his knowledge into his new novel. Set largely in rural Pakistan, “This is Where the Serpent Lives” tells four interwoven stories that contrast the lives of servants desperate to escape their class, and the wealthy, Westernized elites who employ them.

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Kerri Miller talks with Mueenuddin about how his disparate childhood environments shaped his writing, what it’s like to constantly code-switch as he travels between his farm in Pakistan and his current home in Oslo, and why the class system survives the fading of Pakistani feudalism.

Guest:

• Daniyel Mueenuddin’s first book, a collection of stories titled “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders” was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. His new book — his first novel — is “This is Where the Serpent Lives.”

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In Gabriel Tallent’s new novel, “Crux,” two 17-year-old best friends are facing down those fears as they climb self-described death rocks. Climbing is both their passion and their escape from futures that feel predestined.

They both come from dysfunctional families. They both feel called to climbing and the vulnerability, grit and trust it demands. But risk doesn’t disappear once they get off the rocks.

Tallent is, himself, a climber — but as he tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, “Crux” isn’t really a climbing book. Instead, it was a chance for him to explore friendship, vulnerability and the risk inherent in wanting more.

Guest:

• Gabriel Tallent is the author of the New York Times-bestselling novel “My Absolute Darling.” His new novel is “Crux.”

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In her new book, Smith writes that, by then, “we’d come to find ourselves in a climate of language — I’d call it a national vocabulary — grounded in fear, derision, and the notion of an intractably divided nation.”

But Smith believes that poetry rises above the grim jargon. In “Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times,” she describes poetry as a vehicle equipped to transport us beyond facts and figures to places where we may not even know we want or need to go.

Smith joins Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to explore how poetry is uniquely positioned to transform our understanding of each other. Along the way, they trade favorite poems, talk about why it’s crucial that poetry be read out loud and discuss ways to make poetry more approachable — especially for those who only learned to diagram it in school.

Guest:

• Tracy K. Smith is the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard University. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States and is the author of five poetry collections, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning “Life on Mars.” Her newest book is “Fear Less: Poetry in Perilous Times.”

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But that doesn’t stop us from fearing it.

We fear the uncertainty. We fear the pain. We fear who we might become.

But cognitive scientist Maya Shankar says — while understandable — that’s the wrong posture.

In her new book, “The Other Side of Change,” Shankar invites us to shift how we view life’s curve balls. What if curiosity was stronger than fear? What if we saw upheaval as an opportunity to reimagine ourselves?

On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Shankar joins host Keri Miller to talk about how to harness brain science to build resiliency in the face of change and come out on the other side a kinder, stronger and more open-hearted person.

Guest:

• Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast “A Slight Change of Plans.” Her new book is “The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans.”

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Xiaolu Guo was drawn to Herman Melville’s “Moby-Dick,” from the first time she read it in her native Chinese. The writing was lyrical — hard to translate — and the descriptions of sailing were dense. But the symbolism of the great white whale and the sea-faring captain obsessed with revenge captivated her.

Her new novel is a retelling of this classic with a young girl at its center. Protagonist Ishmaelle goes to sea, disguised as a boy, in a desperate grasp for freedom. She wants to leave poverty, gender norms and religious traditions behind. When she ends up on a whaling ship, captained by a free Black man named Seneca, she meets a swash-buckling crew of people who broaden her world — and ours.

Guo joins host Kerri Miller this week to talk about her reimagined “Moby-Dick” which probes gender, race, humanity’s connection to animals and the nature of belonging.

Guest:

• Xiaolu Guo is the author of “Radical” and “Nine Continents.” Her new novel is “Call Me Ishmaelle.”

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Those words were deeply unsettling to journalist Christine Kuehn. She always suspected there was more to her paternal family history. Her father was kind but evasive, and her aunt flat out refused to discuss it. But no one would talk.

Then she got a letter from a screenwriter who asked if her family could be the same Kuehns who spied on Pearl Harbor for the Nazis and shared intel with the Japanese. When she confronted her father, he denied everything. But within an hour, he called back, sobbing, and confessed.

So began Kuehn’s quest to uncover the truth. It took her and her husband Mark decades to sort through FBI files, letters, historical records and family journals — and even longer for her to absorb and process the fact that her grandparents and aunt were accomplished Nazi spies, largely responsible for the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Her new book, “Family of Spies,” tells her family’s shocking history. Turns out, at age 19, Kuehn’s aunt Ruth had an affair with Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels. When he learned she was half Jewish, he sent the family to Hawaii — the better to preserve his purity — with a mandate that they spy on the Americans for the Japanese. Kuehn’s family obliged and changed the course of history.

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Kuehn talks with Kerri Miller about the shame of discovering her family’s history and what helped her move beyond it.

Guest:

• Christine Kuehn is a journalist and writer who lives outside of Baltimore, Maryland. Her book is “Family of Spies.”

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He’s partly right. But his luck is about to turn in ways he can’t expect.

Matthew Pearl, himself an award-winning author, writes what he knows in his new novel, “The Award” — which is why the book swerves into some wildly dark places. He returns to Big Books and Bold Ideas this week to talk with Kerri Miller about the absurdity of the publishing industry today (without naming names, of course) and the inspiration behind “The Award.”

It’s no surprise to neuroscientist Ben Rein, who studies the inner workings of the human brain. He writes in his new book that our brains have been shaped for social contact, both inside and out. When we don’t get enough social interaction, our bodies are stressed. And in our post-COVID, screen-obsessed world, a good chunk of the population is suffering from too much alone time.

Rein joins Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about why friendships are as important to health as how often you exercise and how much you sleep, and why online relationships aren’t enough for a brain that’s evolved to expect face-to-face.

In an early chapter of hew new memoir, Hatmaker writes: “What instinct drove me to an attorney instead of back to a marriage therapist? I was acting purely on intuition — which I only figured out later is the most trustworthy character in the play.”

Learning to listen to and trust her “inner knowing” is just one powerful lesson Hatmaker learned in the crucible. In “Awake,” she also talks about her split from the evangelical Christian church that first gave her a platform, her realigned views on sexuality and gender norms and how she was forced to learn to grieve.

At it’s core, “Awake” is a midlife memoir about how to reinvent and reconnect to yourself when the world burns down around you.

Last week, we unveiled three of Miller’s top five favorites from 2025. This week, the final two — plus one surprise.

If you want to hear the full episodes, you can find them here:

• Misty Copeland at Talking Volumes
• Catherine Newman
• Kate DiCamillo

Big Books and Bold Ideas is produced by Kelly Gordon and engineered by Cliff Bentley. Here’s to more great books and more fascinating interviews in 2026.

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So this week and next, Miller and producer Kelly Gordon share their favorite, most surprising shows from the last 12 months.

This week’s conversations include authors:

• Sarah Hoover
• Charles Bock
• Fabienne Josaphat

Stay tuned for the final two favorites of 2025 — and a bonus surprise — next week.

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It’s no surprise to author Stefan Fatsis, who chronicles the rise of the modern dictionary in his new book, “Unabridged: The Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dictionary.” He joined Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to nerd out over words and to talk about the power the humble dictionary has to shape our lives.

“Language bubbles up from below,” Fatsis says. “For at least the last 60 years, the dictionary’s function is to be descriptive, to reflect back on culture the way we humans use language — as opposed to prescriptive, the belief for many generations, which was that dictionaries should tell people how to use language.”

Fatsis also talks about his time being embedded as a lexicographer-in-training at America’s most famous dictionary publisher, Merriam-Webster, and how the internet and AI threaten this most foundational of books.

Guest:

• Stefan Fatsis is a journalist and the author of many books. He’s also responsible for defining 15 words in Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, including a Kerri Miller favorite — sheeple. His new book is “Unabridged: The Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dictionary.”

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But it’s not enough to dissuade 13 tourists on a luxury cruise to Antarctica — including protagonist Striker, a Black film scout on the ship to search for a location to shoot a movie about Ernest Shackleton — from a kayak excursion on a chilly Christmas Eve.

As the group paddles past towering icebergs and desolate landscapes, a sense of unease gives way to full on dread. And then it all goes terribly awry.

“Antarctica is the land of illusion,” writes author Quan Barry. “All of this endless white tricks the eye.”

What is hidden and what is revealed is the true terror of her new novel, “The Unveiling.” Quan labels it literary horror — equal parts “Lord of the Flies” and “Get Out.” She discusses her wildly original and downright scary new book with host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

Guest:

• Quan Barry is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the author of many books, including “When I’m Gone, Look for Me in the East” (featured on Big Books and Bold Ideas in 2022) and “We Ride Upon Sticks.” Her new novel is “The Unveiling.”

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But as anyone who’s ever take a family vacation knows, complicated feelings get stirred up when you spend 24 hours a day with the people you love the most. Rocky is devoted to her family, almost compulsively. She’s also super annoyed with them, thanks to the dark cloud of perimenopause that hangs over her every day. But that doesn’t stop her from gushing over them, from worrying about them, or from making countless hysterical observations about the achingly beautiful gift of life.

We get to revisit Rocky in Newman’s new novel, “Wreck,” along with the rest of the crew (minus one). Like “Sandwich,” the title does double duty. “Wreck” is set two years after “Sandwich.” Rocky is navigating the chaos of adult children who move back home while also caring for her father, who temporarily resides under her roof. A growing awareness of mortality causes her to fixate on a tragic accident that happens nearby, while an unexplained rash tries to take over her body.

Newman brings her own take on her beloved characters to Big Books and Bold Ideas this week. She and host Kerri Miller talk about Rocky’s new penchant for weepiness, the payment that comes due in our bodies as we age and how to recognize and appreciate a golden time when you’re in it.

Guest:

• Catherine Newman is the author of many books, including “We All Want Impossible Things” and “Sandwich.” Her new novel is “Wreck.”

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But then a stalker exploited Lucia’s on-air vulnerability, and everything changed.

In her new memoir, “What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To,” Lucia tells the full story of how she dealt with escalating harassment in private while she tried to maintain a very public life.

Along the way, Lucia retraces her path to becoming a DJ, how she kicked a drug addiction cold turkey and why she felt completely forsaken by law enforcement, friends and colleagues during the years she was being stalked.

This week, Lucia’s familiar voice returns to MPR’s airwaves when she joins Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas. The self-described “cilantro of radio” shares memories, stories and frustrations from her memoir. Ultimately, she shares herself — one of the things she’s best at doing.

Guest:

• Mary Lucia is a broadcast media personality, writer, actor and voiceover artist. She was a DJ at The Current from 2005 to 2022. Currently, she’s program adviser for Radio K, the University of Minnesota’s student-run radio station. 

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It was a fitting close to the 2025 season — and not-so-subtle reminder that today is all we are promised. Might as well wear the sequins.

Baer’s latest book of poetry, “How About Now,” captures the mundane beauty of what it means to be a modern woman in midlife. She writes of shifting roles and shifting bodies, of the joy she finds in her family — even if she’d rather stand outside and look at them through the window, and the unique bond in female friendships.

MPR News reporter Catharine Richert stepped into the host chair for this Talking Volumes, and talked with Baer about bad childhood poetry, Amish romance novels, the power of getting older and how Baer’s latest poetry collection is both personal and resoundingly universal.

Musicians Faith Boblett and Seth Duin closed out the evening with their own kind of poetry.

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Cassandra labors under a curse in “The Iliad.” Although her prophecies are true, she is never believed. Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” endure the curse of a tragic fate, predetermined, in part, because their families despise each another.

In Oyinkan Braithwaite’s long awaited second novel, “Cursed Daughters,” generation after generation of women are cursed to lose their true loves.

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Kerri Miller welcomes Braithwaite back to the MPR airwaves for a conversation about curses and karma. Can a curse can be eluded, or does it become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy? What if ancestors refuse to acknowledge a curse? Would it disappear? Or is a curse of kind of generational trauma, passed down from family to family until someone steps into the gap and breaks it?

Guest:

• Oyinkan Braithwaite is the author of the best-selling, “My Sister, The Serial Killer.” Her new novel is “Cursed Daughters.”

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Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second in command, is arrested by American troops in Austria, who discover him heading west in a convoy of family and friends. Ostensibly, he intends to surrender to the Allies.

The film tells the story of the American lead prosecutor, Robert Jackson, who believed captured Nazi leadership — including Göring — should stand trial at Nuremberg. He wanted the men to answer publicly for their crimes.

But before they can have their day in court, each one will be examined by a military psychiatrist, to determine if they are mentally fit. The psychiatrist assigned to Göring, the ambitious Robert Kelley, has a secondary intent. He wants to find out what linked the defendants. Did they have a common psychiatric disorder that would explain their heinous crimes? Could their evil be diagnosed, and if so, be prevented from infecting future generations?

“Nuremberg,” which opens nationwide this weekend, stars Russell Crowe as Göring and Rami Malek as Kelley. The film is based on Minneapolis writer Jack el-Hai’s 2011 book, “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.”

To mark the release of “Nuremburg,” Kerri Miller hosted el-Hai at MPR’s St. Paul studios to talk about the book and the movie adaptation. They also discuss the central question that animates both: If the potential for evil lurks inside all of us, how do we stop it?

Guest:

• Jack el-Hai is the author of many books, including “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.” He lives and writes in Minneapolis.

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Host Kerri Miller started the night by asking the audience and then Grisham himself to confirm or deny a series of facts. Does Grisham breed champion sheepdogs at his home in Virginia? Has he been knighted? Does he write a sizzling sex scene for each of his books, just to prove that he can — only to take it out before he sends the manuscript to his editor?

They discussed all that and more — including his new novel, “The Widow,” which is actually more mystery than thriller, and how his first as a small-town lawyer in Mississippi led him to become an author. They also delved into how writing about the criminal justice system in America transformed the way he thought about justice.

Music was provided by Molly Maher, who brought her blend of Americana and the blues to the Fitz, and even debuted a song inspired by “The Widow.”

Agnes is drawn to the mystery and even sacredness of her work. Who was this woman, and how is her body still telling her story?

But it is, as we say today, complicated. Should ancient bodies be poked and prodded for information? Should the land where they have laid for centuries be explored or left undisturbed? And what of the bog itself, with its intricate biosystems of peat and sphagnum moss? Is it, in itself, a living thing that deserves to be heard?

In “Bog Queen,” North gently probes those questions and more. She joins Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about what ancient wisdom offers our contemporary world.

Guest:

• Anna North’s previous novels include “Outlawed” and “America Pacifica.” Her new novel is “Bog Queen.”

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A prodigy who didn’t start dancing until she was 13, she grew up in a transient and often chaotic home. But after she was discovered in a Boys & Girls Club in Los Angeles by a ballet teacher who wanted to expose more kids to the art form, she quickly shot into the national spotlight. As a teen, she studied at the prestigious San Francisco Ballet School and American Ballet Theatre’s Summer Intensive. She joined American Ballet Theatre in 2000 and was promoted to principal just five years later, becoming the first Black woman ever to earn the title in the company’s 75-year history.

Copeland stepped away from the stage in 2020, after an injury and then the pandemic forced a pause. She officially retires this October, but as she told Kerri Miller at Talking Volumes in September, she’s eager to enter the next chapter of her life where she can focus on giving back.

“Bunheads,” her book series for young dancers, is just one example. At Talking Volumes, a warm and playful Copeland talked about her love of ballet, how dance transformed her life and what comes next.

Musical guests for this special Sunday matinee Talking Volumes were Aby Wolf and Eric Mayson.

Winn-Dixie transformed Opal’s life, as only a dog can do.

And their story changed those who read it, as only a book can do.

“Because of Winn-Dixie” received a Newbery Honor the year it was published — a significant award for a debut children’s book. Since then, it has been translated into almost 30 language and been made into a major motion picture.

It also catapulted Minneapolis author Kate DiCamillo into the national spotlight and launched her remarkable career.

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of this modern classic, DiCamillo joined Big Books and Bold Ideas host Kerri Miller in the studio to reflect on what “Because of Winn-Dixie” meant to her.

Between bouts of laughter and teasing, DiCamillo and Miller talked about the transformative experience of writing for children, which DiCamillo believes makes her a better, more hopeful person.

“I didn't know how much that hope was a part of me until I started to write books for children,” she tells Miller. “So that's part of how ‘Winn-Dixie’ changed the whole of my life — not just by letting me become a writer, but by letting me see myself a little bit better.”

Ironically, she was mostly aware that she was cut loose from humanity. She kept notebooks filled with her wonderings and ramblings.

And when she got better, she gathered her shattered experiences into a sharp new novel, “Will There Ever Be Another You.”

Not exactly a memoir, because Lockwood wanted to be freed from the structure of facts, she describes the wild and often psychedelic experience of a long illness “stealing people from themselves.”

“You might look the same to others,” she writes, “but you had been replaced.”

Lockwood joined Kerri Miller at the Fitzgerald Theater for Talking Volumes on Sept. 25 for a funny, unpredictable and profound conversation about how any long illness can take you apart and put you back together. Minneapolis-based singer-songwriter Sarah Morris provided music for the evening.

Children ride their bikes freely. Mom-and-pop stores thrive. And sooner or later, everyone crosses paths with each other.

That sense of closeness is charming — until you have a secret to hide. Such is the case with the two couples at the center of Ryan’s sweeping saga. Cal Jenkins is born with one leg two inches shorter than the other and, thus, is unable to fight in the war. His wife, Becky, is a seer who can bridge the human and spirit worlds for those mourning their lost loved ones. Across town, Margaret is married to Felix Salt. But he doesn’t know she grew up an orphan. She doesn’t know he’s a closeted gay man.

As the years pass and the secrets deepen and unspool, Ryan takes readers on a journey to another era, where nostalgia can’t hide the pain of unrequited love and the devastating effects of war.

Guest:

• Patrick Ryan is the editor in chief of the monthly literary journal, One Story. His new novel is “Buckeye.”

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Kerri Miller welcomed the chance to ask French to expound on what he meant then and what he’s learned since when he came to Red Wing last Thursday night as part of the Philip S. Duff Jr. Civic Lecture Series.

French is a conservative commentator, a constitutional lawyer, former senior editor at The Dispatch and an regular opinion columnist for the New York Times. His most recent book is “Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation.” He also is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Even more sobering, if national statistics apply: Many of those unhoused people have jobs. Some even work 40 or more hours a week. But they still can’t afford to rent an apartment, buy a house or even pay the fees for a long-term motel room.

In his new book, journalist Brian Goldstone writes that there is “something scandalous” about the very concept of the working homeless in a country where hard work and determination are supposed to lead to success.

He joins Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas this week to talk about what he learned as he followed five working homeless families in Georgia over many years. His book, “There is No Place for Us” is a sobering, heart-breaking and urgent call for action to solve this national crisis.

Guest:

• Brian Goldstone has written for a number of national publications, including The New York Times, Harper’s and The New Republic. His new book is “There is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America.”

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Abrams, herself a national political figure, said dark moments such as these need to be met with determined unity — to stand for and with one another. She got those values from her parents, she said, who always emphasized the need to be in church, in school and in service to others.

She also reflected on how failure has worked in her life as a catalyst for growth and how books have led her to develop a deep moral consciousness.

It’s no surprise to readers who love her novels — including “Coded Justice,” the latest thriller in the Avery Keene series, which finds Avery relying on her friends to investigate the morally murky world of AI-powered medicine. Abram’s books are filled with memorable characters who exhibit the same kind of determination and hope that Abram’s embodies.

Don’t miss Abram’s warm and inspiring conversation with Kerri Miller, rounded out by the musical styles of Minneapolis’ own Lady Midnight, as the 2025 Talking Volumes season begins.

And get your tickets for future shows, which include Patricia Lockwood on Sept. 25, Misty Copeland on Sept. 28, John Grisham on Oct. 23 and Kate Baer on Nov. 17.

Guest:

• Stacey Abrams is an activist, an entrepreneur, a political leader and a bestselling author. Her new novel, the third in the Avery Keene series, is “Coded Justice.”

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That’s the question at the center of University of Minnesota epidemiologist Mike Osterholm’s new book, “The Big One.” And his answer is sobering.

Osterholm joined Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas for a blunt and personal assessment of what went right and what went wrong during the COVID-19 pandemic. He’s insistent that if we don’t learn the lessons of the last pandemic, we will be even less prepared for the next one.

Here are five key takeaways from their conversation.

1. Public health communication can’t just be factual.

Osterholm is the founding director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and has decades of experience tracking and researching outbreaks. He said the big lesson for public health leaders is that kindness and humility have to be forefront as they communicate.

Humility is important, he told Miller, because “people mistakenly think that science is truth. It’s not. Science is the pursuit of truth.” He said the scientific community needs to do a better job explaining what we know now and how that might change as research continues.

But the bigger lesson, for him, was that a “just the facts, ma’am” approach isn’t effective. Public health messages need to resonate with people on a personal level.

Early in the pandemic, he broke down crying on his own podcast after a close colleague’s death. That human moment ended up being a connection point for people.

“It wasn’t about the factual stuff I talked about,” Osterholm said. “It was about relating to people on that emotional level of what we were experiencing and how we reach out to each other. So the podcast became more and more of a blending of the science — what’s in the head — with concern for what’s in the heart.”

2. When we know what stops transmission, go all-in on that. 

Once we knew that COVID-19 was an aerosol, Osterholm said, it should have shifted how we thought about transmission.

“We spent millions of dollars on useless things like Plexiglass shields. I kept telling people: If you can put a cigarette on this side of it and smell it, you’re getting hit.”

The only thing that really stops COVID-19 is a well-fitting N95 mask, said Osterholm. Instead of wasting time and money on hygiene theater and cloth masks, we should have “initiated a Manhattan Project-like activity to find the same kind of respiratory protection in something that’s wearable, something that could be washed and reused over and over again, something that people could communicate in and not feel claustrophobic.”

“And do you know how much we’ve invested in that?” he asked. “Zero.”

3. Mandates aren’t a magic solution.

While he absolutely believes the COVID vaccines saved lives and are safe, Osterholm isn’t sold on the efficacy of mandates.

“In some cases, I think we set ourselves back with a mandate,” he told Miller. “If you want to turn someone off so you never have a chance to reach them, tell them they have to do it.”

A better way, he believes, is to give people agency.

“What you find is, that if you actually work with people and say, ‘OK, you’re not going to get it now, but let me give you more information,’ you actually get more people vaccinated. And the whole point for me is: I want the most number of people vaccinated.”

4. The lack of a nonpartisan reports to examine the errors made during COVID-19 is glaring.

Osterholm strongly believes there should be a federal, 9/11 Commission-style report that looks back at COVID-19. He and his coauthor, Mark Olshaker, wrote “The Big One” because there isn’t one.

“We wanted to make certain there was a record somewhere of what happened or didn't happen and what … could have made a difference,” he told Miller.

One example: Osterholm contends widespread lockdowns were ineffective and crude.

“The most important thing was having good medical care, and how are you going to get good medical care if your hospital is at 140 percent capacity? You can’t.”

Instead, he said, we should have used strategic “snow days” with the goal to keep hospital beds under 90 to 95 percent occupancy.

“If we could do that, we could get good medical care that would make a difference” in saving lives, he said, without stalling the economy or forcing kids to do school at home.

5. We are going backward on preparedness for the next pandemic.

But as sobering as the past is, Osterholm was most dire about what comes next.

“We are living in the most dangerous time that public health has experienced,” he told Miller. “[The current administration] has taken the public health system as we know it and gutted it in this country. [Look at] what's happened at the CDC this past week, with the firing of the new director who has been there a month, the loss of the senior people there, the fact that the one redeeming, hopeful lesson we learned during the pandemic is how important vaccines could be. And now we have stopped all research on the one vaccine that holds the best future for us with influenza pandemics and COVID pandemics. We live in a very anti-science world right now. And I never thought that I would see the day that the CDC, the NIH and the FDA are enemies of public health, as opposed to the protectors of it.”

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Newly diagnosed with cancer, he needed health insurance, fast — plus, he was the primary financial supporter of his wife and daughters. Which is how he found himself becoming a mail carrier, back in his hometown in rural Appalachia.

It was a tough transition. Grant was bad at his job — “deeply incompetent,” he writes in his new memoir, “Mailman.” He is shaken by his lack of real-life skills, by his inability to feel at home in the mountains where he grew up, by his uncertainty in what it means to be in community during a time of isolation.

But “Mailman” rarely lingers on the malcontent. Instead, what Grant learned about himself, his fellow Appalachians and our country as a whole propel his new book. He joins host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to share stories about working as a rural mail carrier, about blue collar versus white collar work, and about the overlooked importance of public service in a fractured nation.

Guest:

• Stephen Starring Grant is a writer and brand strategist. His new memoir is “Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home.”

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Many seek the wealth Capt. Kidd accrued during years of pirating and then had to hide when his arrest was imminent.

In popular lore, Capt. Kidd’s name is synonymous with the fearsome, ruthless privateers of the pirate age. But the truth about William Kidd is more nuanced — and interesting.

Historian Samuel Marquis, who is also William Kidd’s ninth great-grandson, writes in his new biography of Kidd:

Though the real Capt. Kidd would have loathed being labeled as one of the most notorious villains of all time, he would have delighted at being a continuing hot topic of conversation for over 300 years and counting.

Marquis’ previous books include “Blackbeard: The Birth of America.” His new book is “Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal,” and he joins Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to sort reality from the scuttlebutt when it comes to the age of pirates.

Guest:

• Samuel Marquis is a historian and author. His new book is “Captain Kidd: A True Story of Treasure and Betrayal.”

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Together, they dreamed of running away from their ordinary lives — of selling everything and sailing the world. And in 1972, they made it happen. They set course for a fresh start in New Zealand and left England in a 31-foot yacht.

All went well until they reached the Pacific, where a chance encounter with a whale sank their boat. They managed to get a few supplies onto their life raft, where they waited for help to come.

And waited.

And waited.

Exhausted, starving, struggling to survive and get along, their marriage was put to the ultimate test.

But when they were finally rescued after more than 100 days adrift at sea, they were a stronger couple than before.

Author Sophie Elmhirst discovered the Bailey’s true story on a message board and knew she had to bring it to a new generation — with the added twist that this isn’t just a personal survival story. It’s a marital survival story.

She joins host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk all about “A Marriage at Sea.”

Guest:

• Sophie Elmhirst writes regularly for the Guardian Long Read. In 2020, she won the British Press Award for Feature Writer of the Year. Her book, “A Marriage at Sea,” was published in the U.S. in July 2025.

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So this week, Big Books and Bold Ideas host Kerri Miller sits down with three Minnesota romance experts to talk about romance writing and reading today. She brings some quizlets and challenges, and each author shares an excerpt of a romance novel that has stuck with them.

Along the way, they discuss the rules of romance (happy endings are nonnegotiable), what differentiates a love story from a romance novel and how the industry is starting to adapt to the diversity readers want.

They also recommend romance novels that have maybe slipped through the cracks but deserve attention.

For Richards, that was the book she chose to feature in her excerpt: the historical queer romance “A Shore Thing” by Joanna Lowell. She also recommended anything by writer Cat Sebastian, particularly “It Takes Two to Tumble.”

Tschida said readers should check out the wit and charm inherent in any Nikki Payne novel, who is best know for her rewrites of Jane Austen. “Start with ‘Pride and Protest,’” Tschida recommended, “and then move on to ‘Sex, Lies and Sensibility.’” She also prescribed Carly Bloom, who writes books broader than the cowboy romance genre she is often stuck in.

Palmer said she’ll “never stop talking” about Naina Kumar. Her most recent book, “Flirting with Disaster,” is similar to the movie “Sweet Home Alabama” — but in this case, a hurricane traps a couple headed toward divorce in the home they built together when their love was young.

Guests:

• Ellie Palmer is the author of “Four Weekends and a Funeral” and the just published “Anywhere With You,” which is set in the north woods of Minnesota.
• Sam Tschida’s newest romance novel follows a vampire determined to get her own Hallmark movie ending. “Undead and Unwed” comes out in in late October. Sam’s past books include “Siri, Who Am I?” and “Errands and Espionage.”
• Lauren Richards is the co-owner of Tropes & Trifles, Minnesota’s first romance-only bookstore.

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And if so, could meaningful connection be found in a simple but purposeful café, where the lonesome are paired with the perfect partners for deep conversation?

That’s the fantasy at the heart of Kathy Wang’s new novel, “The Satisfaction Café.” It follows Joan who starts the book as a Chinese graduate students in California in the 1970s. But her life quickly turns, as revealed on page one, when Wang writes: “Joan had not thought she would stab her husband.”

From there, Joan is off to the races, marrying an older white man as a second husband, navigating his wealthy world, all while trying to find her own purpose and place.

“The Satisfaction Café.” is one of the must-reads of the summer — and this week, Wang joins Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about loneliness, the curse (or blessing) of small talk, why some cultures are OK with brazenly talking about money (and some aren’t) and why she truly believes a third place like the Satisfaction Café could benefit us all.

Guest:

• Kathy Wang is the author of “Family Trust,” “Imposter Syndrome” and “The Satisfaction Café.” She is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard Business School, and lives in the Bay Area.

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But nothing is quite as it seems.

Both the house and the group are out of sorts. One friend mysteriously disappears. The town deals with a series of break-ins. Jim starts to feel like the energy in the house is off — that the spiritualist camp that started the town never really left. And then an eerie stranger arrives.

On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Murphy joins host Kerri Miller to talk about what makes good noir and what inspired his book. Ghosts abound.

Guest:

• Dwyer Murphy is the editor-in-chief of Lit Hub’s Crime Reads and the author of the new novel “The House on Buzzards Bay.”

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Joy Harjo, former poet laureate and citizen of the Muscogee Nation, expected to honor her mother’s death and life by washing her body, but as she reveals in the introduction to her new book, the ritual didn’t happen — leaving her to wander through grief without a touchstone.

Harjo’s new book is called “Washing My Mother’s Body,” and she joins host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about how this poem was able to bend time for her — and could be used as a model for others walking through grief without the guideposts of ritual. They also discuss the artwork created for the poem by fellow Muscogee citizen Dana Tiger, which adds beauty and vibrancy to a poem about saying good-bye.

Guest:

• Joy Harjo served three terms as the twenty-third Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019 to 2022. She is the author of several poetry collections, plays, children’s books, and memoirs, as well as the editor of multiple anthologies of Native poetry. Her new book is “Washing My Mother’s Body: A Ceremony for Grief.”

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Her new memoir, “The Last American Road Trip,” recounts the dozens of drives they’ve taken since 2016. They leave their home in Missouri and crisscross the country, even as earth-shaking events remake it.

Along the way, she disentangles venerated American ideals from the mythology of American exceptionalism. She gapes in wonder at the majesty of the national parks and celebrates the forethought that created them — while acknowledging the threat facing them today.

Even the great St. Louis Gateway Arch in her hometown represents both “a triumph and a tragedy,” she writes. It’s “a gateway and a memorial, a monolith with no practical purpose that looks dramatically different depending on where you stand.”

Kendzior joins host Kerri Miller to take us all on a road trip across America. Grab your favorite snacks, buckle your seatbelt and come along.

Guest:

• Sarah Kendzior is a journalist and best-selling author. Her new memoir is “The Last American Road Trip.”

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The Civil War is remembered for its sweeping battles: Gettysburg, Atlanta, Antietam. Less known are the small troops of men, enlisted by both sides, to fight far from the battlefields.

These ruthless soldiers relied on stealth to sneak behind enemy lines — often wearing their opponent’s uniform — and destroyed supply lines, assassinated military officials and gathered critical information.

Today, we know this kind of warfare as shadow ops — which is a specialty of military historian Patrick K. O’Donnell. A roadside marker he happened to see in rural Virginia ignited years of research into the Civil War-era special forces who were tasked by President Lincoln to undertake spy operations and secrete missions against Confederate units.

This week, he joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold ideas to talk about his book, “The Unvanquished,” which masterfully tells the story of this forgotten chapter of history.

Guest:

• Patrick K. O’Donnell is a bestselling military historian and an expert on elite units. He is the author of thirteen books, including “The Indispensables,” “The Unknowns” and “Washington’s Immortals.” His new book is “The Unvanquished.”

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Her new memoir, “Behind the Velvet Red Curtain,” written with MPR News journalist Elizabeth Shockman, is an intimate retelling of what happened when Womack moved to Moscow at age 15 to train under Russian greats and immersed herself in ruthless competition, obsessive training and tenacity in the face of challenge.

She talks about what it took to be an American ballerina in Russia with Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

Guest:

• Joy Womack is a ballet dancer and choreographer, currently based in Paris. Her new memoir, as told to Elizabeth Shockman, is “Behind The Red Velvet Curtain.”

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But like many kids, Margaret doesn’t quite know how to hold this painful thing, and the adults in her life are no help. So she stuffs it and believes it will stay buried, where it can harm no one.

And then she becomes a mother.

Jones asks many psychological questions in “Sleep.” Maybe the most poignant: How does a parent keep their own trauma from hurting their kids? How do you raise a child to be safe without infecting them with a sense of fear?

This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Jones joins host Kerri Miller to talk about that, as well as the power of secrets, the complexities of mother-daughter relationships and the tenuous balance between protection and hypervigilance.

Guest:

• Honor Jones is a senior editor at The Atlantic and a writer. Her debut novel, “Sleep,” was named “one of the best summer reads of 2025” by the Oprah Book Club.

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“What We Value” is a peek behind the mental curtain. Why do our brains intend one thing and do another? Why is lasting change, even desired change, so hard? Neuroscientist Falk says it’s because our gray matter is silently making value calculations, which don’t always benefit us. If we can identify those calculations, she writes, we can harness them to make more meaningful choices.

Falk joins Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to explain her thesis. Along the way, they touch on the addictiveness of Minecraft, why habits — both good and bad — are so hard to change, and how a book about Benedict Cumberbatch impacted Falk’s research and life.

Guest:

• Emily Falk is a neuroscientist and a professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania. She also directs the Communication Neuroscience Lab and the Climate Communication Division at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. “What We Value: The Neuroscience of Choice and Change” is her first book.

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But in her senior year of college, she was raped. That propelled her into a public role as activist to change an infuriating gap in the law when it comes to rape survivors.

“When I found out that my rape kit could be destroyed, untested, in six months — even if the statue of limitations was 15 years — I felt like that was against everything I was taught about the criminal justice system,” she told Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

“It was [at] that moment that I decided I would actually be fighting the criminal justice system to reform it, because that was my definition of justice — to make sure that no one else would go through what I had to go through.”

Nguyen’s new memoir, “Saving Five,” is an inspiring, infuriating and ultimately hopeful testament to how one courageous woman fought the system and won.

Guest:

• Amanda Nguyen is an astronaut for Blue Origin and an activist. Her new memoir is “Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope.”

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But time rolls on, and no place is untouched by the changes it brings — not the bar nor the people in it.

Texas native Callie Collins knows a thing or two about bars. That’s why she set her newest novel, “Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine,” in an Austin saloon, circa 1970s Texas. The story unfolds from three different viewpoints: the lead guitarist of the new house band; the bar owner trying to help the establishment and herself find a future; and a kid from East Texas desperate for direction and kinship.

Collins talks bars, the blues and belonging with host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

Guest:

• Callie Collins is a writer and editor from Texas. “Walk Softly on This Heart of Mine” is her first novel.

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The prairie witch in Karen Russell’s fantastical new novel, “The Antidote,” describes it as a pressure and a weight. She has the ability to receive the memories of her fellow citizens in a small failing town in Nebraska, which offers relief to anyone who feels like their pasts are too heavy to bear.

“Whatever they can’t stand to know,” she says, “the memories that make them chase impossible dreams, that make them sick with regret and grief. Whatever cargo unbalances the cart, I can hold on to anything for anyone.”

But when a Dust Bowl-era storm blows through, the deposited memories likewise rush away. What happens when the past is forgotten?

Russell’s long-awaited novel contains epic calamity, deep friendship and just enough magic to stir the pot as she reckons with the consequence of collective forgetting.

Guest:

• Karen Russell is the author of many books, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist, “Swamplandia.” Her new novel is “The Antidote.”

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But what about a life that’s focused on curiosity, exploration and a variety of experiences that broaden our world?

University of Chicago psychology professor Shigehiro Oishi says that’s a psychologically rich life — and in his new book, “Life in Three Dimensions,” he argues that a psychological rich life is just as important as a life filled with happiness and meaning.

Professor Oishi joined Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to discuss the markers of a good life. They talk about the value of risk, the importance of awe and how the American individualism can hinder a good life.

Guest:

• Shigehiro Oishi is a celebrated professor of psychology at the University of Chicago. His latest book is “Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life.”

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The story revolves around a cold and often hostile marriage. It’s 1910, and husband Theodulf is the newly commissioned caretaker of a grand lighthouse situated on the treacherous shore of Lake Superior. His new bride, Willa, has been forced into the marriage by her scheming mother after a family tragedy. The terrain is brooding, the climate unforgiving. Maybe no surprise, the new relationship is equally harsh.

But Geye says the complexity of Theodulf and Willa are what make them human, and as he’s gotten older, he appreciates the “many shades” of their rocky marriage.

“Of all the institutions in our culture, marriage and parenthood are two of the most fraught,” Geye tells host Kerri Miller. “They can be the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most amazing — and I don’t know a whole lot of people who end up together like Theodulf and Willa do. But it’s more interesting to me when people like that do.”

Geye joined Miller on stage at The College of St. Scholastica in Duluth on May 1 for a special “on the road” edition of Talking Volumes. They discussed the complications of marriage and family life, why Geye chose to tell this story from many different points of view, and how his many years spent traveling to Lake Superior influenced his book. Music for the evening was provided by Superior Siren.

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That’s the main thesis of philosopher Mark Rowlands new book, “The Word of Dog.”

He says out loud what many dog owners secretly wonder: Is my dog a better person than me? And while Rowlands certainly agrees that humans remain top of the intellectual pyramid, he does theorize that our canine companions inhabit the world in a uniquely uncomplicated way.

“Although dogs have no idea what philosophy is,” he writes, “they live the big questions.”

Join Rowlands and fellow dog lover Kerri Miller for this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to be enlightened and inspired by the dogs in your life.

Guest:

• Mark Rowlands is a professor of philosophy at the University. His new book is “The Word of Dog: What our Canine Companions Can Teach Us about Living a Good Life.”

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So argues philosophy professor Barry Lam in his new book, “Fewer Rules, Better People.” While Lam acknowledges law as the backbone of society, he says America has forgotten the good of discretion. Be it a sports referee, a parent, a police officer or a prosecutor, decision makers need the freedom to exercise discernment about how the rules get applied.

Lam joins Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas for a philosophical and practical discussion about how discretion greases the wheels of our culture and why removing it creates a lumbering bureaucracy.

Guest:

• Barry Lam is a professor of philosophy at UC Riverside and host of the podcast Hi-Phi Nation. His new book is “Fewer Rules, Better People: The Case for Discretion.”

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So begins “Abundance,” the new book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson that has politicos abuzz.

In it, they argue that progressives have created a culture of scarcity the last few decades, especially when it comes to solving America’s thorniest problem, like homelessness, housing affordability and green energy. The solution, they say, is to face up to the failures of liberal policies, no matter how well intended, and renew a politics of plenty.

“If you look back in American history, America used to built things — proudly,” Thompson tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “And then at some point over the last 50 years, liberalism — which was once defined as the politics of building — became defined as the politics of blocking. [In the book], we’re trying to execute a bit of a paradigm shift here: We want to marry the politics of building with modern progressivism.”

Guest:

• Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the co-author of the new book, “Abundance,” along with the New York Times’ Ezra Klein.

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Or is destiny really millions of tiny choices swirled with events out of our control?

That’s one of the many questions at the heart of Eric Puchner’s gorgeous new novel, “Dream State.” It’s received a dizzying amount of praise since it was released in February — making the New York Times best seller list, becoming an Oprah Book Club pick. But despite the buzz, the novel is deceptively hard to pin down.

Set in rural Montana, the book begins with two college buddies, as one of them, Charlie, prepares to marry the love of his life. But when Cece heads to the family cabin early to prepare for the wedding and meets no-nonsense best friend Garrett, her world wobbles.

What happens next — amidst a wedding besieged by norovirus — launches the next 50 years, as the three friends remain intertwined by regrets and grief, possibilities and love.

Puchner joins host Kerri Miller for a wide-ranging conversation on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. Among topics of discussion: why so few authors write about male friendship, why meeting friends from your beloved’s past can be so perilous and why setting “Dream State” in a Montana cabin was so crucial to the plot.

Guest:

• Eric Puchner is an associate professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and the author of the novel “Model Home,” as well as several short stories. His new book is “Dream State.”

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But the idea didn’t grow roots until the racial uprisings after the murder of George Floyd, when Confederate statues came tumbling down.

“Years ago, Tony Horowitz wrote a remarkable book called ‘Confederates in the Attic,’ wondering why so much of the South was still fighting the Civil War,” Bohjalian tells host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “Horowitz journeyed through the (region) to understand why the Lost Cause still existed in the minds of so many Southerners. I thought about that book a lot in 2020, as the statues came down on Monument Avenue in Richmond. That’s when it really clicked in my mind.”

Bohjalian and Miller also talk about the delicate dance of writing historical fiction — when facts must be accurate but the story enticing — and how the current day echoes our nation’s past.

Guest:

• Chris Bohjalian is the author of many books including “The Flight Attendant,” which was turned into a streaming series. His 25th novel is “The Jackal’s Mistress.”

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That distressing question provoked her first novel, “All the Water in the World.” In this futuristic dystopia, climate change is unchecked. Cities are drowned, people are adrift. But already, some are thinking of the after by looking to the past. The former curators and researchers at the American Natural History Museum have taken up residence on the museum’s roof, forming a new sort of family and thinking about how to preserve the artifacts still in their power.

“Museums are … the repositories of our collective understandings, evidence of discoveries, warehouses of materials that will fuel discoveries in the future,” writes Caffall. “They hold the past in trust for the future.”

This week, Caffall joins host Kerri Miller to talk about the hope she wants to see in dystopian fiction.

“The narratives we have in the popular culture about what disasters do to people are mostly incorrect,” she says. “There isn’t usually vast looting or mass violence. There’s usually a coming together of people trying to remake community, trying to support each other, trying to think about what happens in the aftermath.”

“To me, that’s a more interesting, more important, maybe more feminine story about what it takes to rebuild.”

Guest:

• Eiren Caffall is a musician, writer and researcher. Her first novel is “All the Water in the World.”

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Listening to testimony of atrocities and knowing that these public confessions came with exoneration changed her. She filled legal pad after legal pad with stories and kept them for decades.

“I think it’s brilliant, in some respects — how a country moves forward from such an atrocious history. What can we do to heal a nation?” she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “But I was left asking myself: Is this enough? Do people feel satisfied by truth alone?”

And in fact, that’s the question at the center of Francis-Sharma’s taut new thriller, “Casualties of Truth.” Shifting between South Africa in the late 1990s and Washington, D.C., in 2018, the novel tells the story of Prudence Wright who is forced to confront a violent past she has tried to ignore. But violence begats violence, and trauma begats trauma. How can one truly atone?

Guest:

• Lauren Francis-Sharma is the author of “‘Til the Well Runs Dry” and “Book of the Little Axe,” as well as the assistant director of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and a recovering corporate attorney. Her new thriller is “Casualties of Truth.”

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But that might not mean what you think.

“In this book, the term trouble has two meanings,” Jones tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. ”I open the book with the lyrics of a spiritual, ‘Wade in the Water.’ You know, ‘God’s gonna trouble the water.’ And that comes from the book of John. In the book of John, we learn that when God troubles the water and we step into it, we are healed. This is the way forward for us. I think in some ways, trouble is precisely what we need.”

Her new book, “The Trouble of Color” tells the honest story of her own family — filled with pain but also joy and resilience. Because, as Jones says, she believes we all have the capacity to sit with hard stories and be healed.

Guest:

• Martha S. Jones is a historian and writer with numerous titles to her name. Her latest book is “The Trouble of Color: An American Family Memoir.”

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The secret is in the mindset, according to health psychologist Kari Leibowitz. She spent a year doing research in Tromsø, Norway studying how the people who live above the Arctic Circle celebrate deepest winter. What she discovered is that it goes beyond hygge. It depends on where your brain settles its focus.

“Winter is many things. It’s paradoxical,” says Leibowitz. “Yes, it’s cold and dark, and it can be gloomy and depressing. But it can also be beautiful and quiet and cozy and magical. The mindset we have about winter helps us make sense of this paradox. Is winter wonderful or dreadful? Is the season a limiting time of year, or is it full of opportunity? Research shows us mindsets matter most in these ambiguous situations.”

Leibowitz joins Kerri Miller this week on Big Books and Bold Ideas to explore how shifting your mindset about winter can be a useful life skill. She also tackles the question about who has the worst winter, and how the debate over Daylight Saving Time should be settled.

Guest:

• Kari Leibowitz is an health psychologist, speaker and writer. Her debut book is “How to Winter.”

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When her husband, journalist and author Tony Horowitz, died of a cardiac event on a Washington, D.C., sidewalk, she was stunned. He was only 60. What happened?

But she didn’t have time to mourn, seeing as her boys needed support, her books needed writing, the world needed answers.

As she describes in her new book, “Memorial Days,” it took her three years to recognize she was operating on autopilot, disassociated from her life and her body due to unrealized grief. So she traveled home to Australia and forced herself into solitude to relive the worst days of her life and finally give her grief sway.

This week, Brooks joined host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about what happened next.

Guest:

• Geraldine Brooks is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author. Her new memoir is “Memorial Days.”

Audio book excerpts courtesy Penguin Audio.

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But none of those books were written before January 6, 2021, when an insurrection at the nation’s capitol ended the tradition of peacefully transferring power in the U.S. — a tradition that started with Adams himself.

In her new book, “Making the Presidency,” Chervinsky looks back at Adams life and focuses on how George Washington’s successor shaped the presidency in the final years of the 18th century. She argues that it was Adams who established political norms for the executive branch — norms that are quickly being discarded by the current administration.

What can the second president teach us about our country’s 47th? That’s on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

Guest:

• Lindsay Chervinsky is a presidential historian and the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library. Her new book is “Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic.”

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We start with Leif Enger, who joined host Kerri Miller in Red Wing last June to talk about his novel, “I Cheerfully Refuse.” Enger’s latest book is dystopian in nature, but at its heart, it’s a love story.

We then dip into Miller’s conversation with British-Nigerian author Ore Agbaje-Williams, whose subversive and wickedly funny novel, "The Three of Us,” delves into love between friends. Is it possible our friendships are more foundational than the bonds we form with romantic partners?

We end with Jedidiah Jenkins and his memoir, “Mother, Nature.” It recounts a five-thousand-mile road trip he and his mother took to retrace the route his parents traversed in the 1970s as they walked across America. It sounds sentimental. But it’s really Jedidiah’s attempt to reconcile two conflicting truths: that his mother loves him completely and that she does not accept that he’s gay.

If you want to hear the complete conversation from any of today’s authors, click the links above or look for the episodes in your favorite podcast.

In Fabienne Josaphat’s new novel, “Kingdom of No Tomorrow,” 20-year-old Nettie Boileau trades the turmoil of Duvalier’s Haiti for the tumult of 1960s America. Settling with her aunt in Oakland, she is drawn to the social programs spearheaded by the burgeoning Black Panther Party.

But her focus on healing and public health is soon subsumed by the revolution and her passionate relationship with Black Panther leader Melvin Mosley.

Josaphat drew on her own family’s history for insight into the activism of the Panthers. Her father, an attorney, was imprisoned during Francois Duvalier’s reign in Haiti. And she remembers reading her father’s books as a child, biographies and memoirs of leaders in the Civil Rights Movement.

“I remember starting to do my research about the Black Panthers and thinking to myself, ‘I think I know about this already but I don’t know how. Where did I learn this?’” she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “And then I realized, it was probably me going through [my father’s] books.”

Josaphat brings the gift of those books full circle with her new novel as she brings the inner workings of the Black Panthers to fresh light, including how the fight for social justice didn’t always mean equal rights for women.

Guest:

• Fabienne Josaphat was born and raised in Haiti. Her new novel “Kingdom of No Tomorrow” was awarded the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction in 2023.

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She’s telling her story anyway because she believes an honest rendering of modern motherhood is necessary.

“In my defense, birth and motherhood did not match up to the narrative I’d been fed, and it felt like a nasty trick,” she writes. “And while my mental breakdown was embarrassing at times, especially considering how it exposed me as a puerile and spoiled little fool, it also showed how pernicious it is to sell tales of motherhood as being so wonderful and feminine, the very essence of womanhood.”

Hoover’s memoir is brutally honest about the disassociation and rage she felt the year after her son was born, and how her eventual diagnosis of postpartum depression felt like like both a relief and a betrayal. She joined host Kerri Miller on this week’s show to talk about the taboos of motherhood, the trad wife trend and why she was compelled to go public with her story.

Guest:

• Sarah Hoover’s new memoir is “The Motherload: Episodes from the Brink of Motherhood.” She lives in New York with her husband and two children.

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But the surprises didn’t stop there. When Wright Faladé eventually moved to France and met his father, he discovered a connection to Dahomey royalty and a past complicated by the slave trade and colonialism.

This made-for-TV personal history inspired his new novel, “The New Internationals,” which details the love triangle formed by a Holocaust survivor, a Sorbonne student from colonial West Africa and a Black GI from America. This week, he joined Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas to share even more of his family’s history and discuss how the potent mix of grief, guilt and hope found in post-war Europe created the world as we know it today.

Guest:

• David Wright Faladé is a professor in the MFA program at the University of Illinois and the author of several books, including “Black Cloud Rising.” His just-released novel is “The New Internationals.”

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So this week, Big Books and Bold Ideas asked two historians who’ve written about America’s past to reflect on America’s future and give us a broader view of where we are. They point to eras in our past that predict our present. They also discuss what they’ll be watching for as Trump returns to the Oval Office.

Guests:

• Carol Anderson a historian and professor of African-American studies at Emory University. She’s the author of many books, including “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide” and “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy.”
• Lindsay Chervinsky is a presidential historian, the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library and the author of “Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents that Forged the Republic.”

If you missed it, be sure to check out Big Books and Bold Ideas 2024 series on the state of American democracy. It kicked off with historian Heather Cox Richardson, the author of “Democracy Awakening,” and included conversations with Elizabeth Cobbs, Frank Bruni, Eboo Patel, Sharon McMahon and others.

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The naturalist and author sees the world through the lens of her Anishinaabe ancestors, where interdependence is reality, and humans are neither above nor below the natural world. We are just one part, kin to every animal and plant and stream.

Her beloved book, “Braiding Sweetgrass,” laid out this philosophy. Published in 2013, it enjoyed a gentle rise to public consciousness, not jumping onto the bestseller list until six years after publication. But it remains there to this day, a beloved devotional to millions.

Now Kimmerer is back “The Serviceberry” — with a slim book that expounds on one of her core tenants: that nature’s generosity is an invitation to explore our own.

Kimmerer joined Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to take us all on a virtual field trip to behold the humble serviceberry, where we get a lesson on generosity, gratitude and relationship.

Guest:

• Robin Wall Kimmerer is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, a plant ecologist, a professor and an author. Her newest book is “The Serviceberry: Abudnance and Reciprocity in the Natural World.”

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The premise is that many students admitted to elite colleges arrive having read very few books all the way through.

“It’s not that they don’t want to do the reading,” says the article. “It’s that they don’t know how. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.”

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, two writers who have also been college literature professors share their views on the article’s argument. What have they seen in their own students? And how can deep reading be encouraged?

Guests:

• Karen Swallow Prior is an English professor, a monthly columnist for Religion News Service and the author of, among other books, “On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books.”
• Taiyon Coleman is dean of liberal arts and academic foundations at North Hennepin Community College. Her latest book is “Traveling without Moving,” which you can also hear about on a past episode of Big Books and Bold Ideas.

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Widowed Maggie believes it is her life’s mission to fix what she perceives as broken. Or as puts it: “I liberate people who don’t know they’re stuck. … I change people’s lives for the better whether they see it that way or not.”

If that sounds ominous, that’s on purpose. Christopher Bollen wanted to crank the lines of suspense tight for his newest novel. And when Maggie meets her match in an equally troubled little boy and the two wage battle, this thriller takes readers on the wildest of rides.

Bollen joined host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to dive into the creation of “Havoc.” They talk about the destabilizing force of loneliness, how both the elderly and the young are conventionally overlooked, and how Bollen managed to channel the voice of 81-year-old Maggie as he set about to write.

Guest:

• Christopher Bollen is the author of many books, including: ”A Beautiful Crime” and “Orient.” His new novel is “Havoc.”

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But his wife really wanted a baby. And he didn’t think it would be right to tell her no.

“In the book, I say: She wants to be a mom? OK. Let her. I’ll continue with my ambitions. On weekends, I’ll put on the Baby Bjorn, tell friends ‘we’re parenting,’ using that plural. That’s what I thought I was going to do. I was going to put in my time, let [my wife] handle the heavy lifting.”

But then Diana, Bock’s wife, was diagnosed with an advanced form of leukemia when Lily was just six months old. She died a few days before Lily’s third birthday. Bock had to step up.

As he tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, his new memoir “is about the emotional and physical journey, of this little girl with no mom who wants to go to the ball, and I have to grow up and be man enough to take her and handle it.”

It’s a conversation about parenting, about heartbreak, about maturing — and ultimately, about love.

Guest:

• Charles Bock is the author of several books, including “Beautiful Children” and “Alice & Oliver.” His new memoir is “I Will Do Better.”

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But more change is needed, argues journalist Brigid Schulte. Her new book, “Over Work,” is centered on the idea that work has not really worked for “far too may people for far too long.” Americans increasingly say they are dissatisfied with their jobs and burned out. It’s a bleak setting for employees — and employers.

So how do we make work work? Can the daily grind be transformed?

Schulte joins MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about why we work the way we do and the changes that could make work more productive, autonomous and joyful.

Guest:

• Brigid Schulte is a journalist and the director of the Better Life Lab. Her new book is “Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life.”

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But humans have long fetishized the gut. Doctors and philosophers have deliberated its influence on our emotional stability. Theologians declared it wicked. Disposing of bodily waste in both sanitary and silent ways is a mark of modernity.

Historian Elsa Richardson found it all utterly fascinating. So she wrote a book to probe the organ’s colorful and often boisterous past.

This week, she joins host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas to explore the age-old question: Are we really ruled by our stomachs?

Guest:

• Elsa Richardson is a historian at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. Her new book is “Rumbles: A Curious History of the Gut.”

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Long known as an iconoclast in the medical community, Dr. Makary’s latest book, “Blind Spots,” examines how health care can go so wrong. He chalks much of it to groupthink and a growing inability for science to identify its own biases.

His diagnosis? Humility.

“Medical science is about transparency and civil discourse. Great ideas and truths have always emerged from a healthy debate within the scientific community,” he tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “And tragically, what we’ve seen in the modern era is a small group of people making the decisions for everybody — many times with a paternalist and hierarchical philosophy.”

Guest:

• Dr. Marty Makary is a surgeon and public health researcher at Johns Hopkins University. His newest book is “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.”

The question is really: Will we enable it or hinder it?

Helen Scales lives at the balance of those two intersecting points. A marine biologist, writer and broadcaster, Scales is honest about the scale of change. But as she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, she believes it’s not too late. We still have time to figure out how to co-exist sustainably. Her new book, “What the Wild Sea Can Be,” explores practical solutions — like no-fish zones and banning undersea mining — that can give the planet’s oceans time to heal.

Guest:

• Helen Scales is a marine biologist, a writer and a storytelling ambassador for the Save Our Seas Foundation. Her newest book is “What the Wild Sea Can Be.”

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Powers’ new novel, “Playground,” turns the same eye to the planet’s oceans. As he tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, his hope is that the power of storytelling will animate humans to behold the sea with fresh wonder — and act to preserve it before it’s too late.

“These last three novels of mine are attempts to find ways of telling stories that challenge that separateness or sense of entitlement,” he says, “that sense that we are the essential and perhaps the only interesting game in town and that everything else is a resource for our project.”

Guest:

• Richard Powers is the author of fourteen novels, including “The Overstory,” “Bewilderment” and “Orfeo.” His new book is “Playground.”

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She is a prolific writer, a lifelong reader and a delightful human. Which made her the perfect guest to close out Talking Volumes celebratory 25th season on Tuesday, Oct. 29.

No stranger to the stage at the Fitzgerald Theater, DiCamillo came with stories and quips. She and host Kerri Miller talked about the impact of Winn-Dixie on DiCamillo’s life, what she knows now that she didn’t know then, and how stories can change your life.

It was an evening full of wonder and laughter. Singer-songwriter Humbird was the special musical guest.

But did you know she grew up a precocious youngest child in a family that struggled after the death of her father? And that she was a budding feminist who chafed at menial tasks like sewing and wished for nothing more than to be a scholar? And did you know she was only ever paid $5 for the song that would become America’s unofficial national anthem?

It’s another example of an ordinary person whose contributions to our country’s legacy are extraordinary.

That’s a class of people government teacher Sharon McMahon finds especially compelling. In her new book, “The Small and Mighty,” she highlights unsung Americans who changed history but didn’t make it into the textbooks (often, “because they weren’t a white man,” she reminds her readers).

It’s a take fans of her podcast, “Here’s Where It Gets Interesting,” will find familiar. A former government and law teacher, McMahon lives in Duluth. But she burst onto the national stage in 2020 when she took to Instagram to combat misinformation she saw swirling on social media after the election. Her direct yet amiable style garnered her account, @sharonsaysso, more than a million followers, who now look to her for historical and current event facts and context.

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, McMahon joins host Kerri Miller to talk about “The Small and the Mighty,” why history matters more than ever, and how her belief in everyday Americans influencing democracy animates all her work.

Eboo Patel writes in his book, “We Need to Build,” that a fresh manifesto for a new era in America could sound like this: “We, the varied peoples of a nation struggling to be reborn, are defeating the things we don’t like by building the things we do.”

It’s a realistic but hopeful take from a man who is considered by many to be an expert on how to tolerate and even celebrate differences in a pluralistic society. During his conversation with host Kerri Miller, Patel admits he was a fire-breathing activist when he was young, more inclined to burn the whole system down. But after years of working with Americans of different beliefs, he says, he has come to value being more of “an architect than an arsonist.”

“You don’t create societies by burning things down,” he says. “You create societies by building things.”

It’s a provocative, thoughtful and inspiring discussion that will linger long past the results of this election.

Guest:

• Eboo Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith America, an organization that supports religious diversity. His most recent book is “We Need to Build: Field Notes for a Diverse Democracy.”

Barry’s new novel, “The Heart in Winter,” is his first set in America. But true to form, it features the Irish. That’s because, in the 1890s, Irish immigrants by the thousands descended upon the tiny frontier town of Butte to work the copper mines — a historical nugget Barry learned in 1999.

As he told host Kerri Miller, at the time, he thought to himself: “My God, this is a Western but it's a Western with County Cork accents. I’m in. This is my book.”

He immediately hopped on a plane to Montana, where he was welcomed warmly. Butte remains proud of its Irish heritage. And he went back to Ireland and wrote something like 100,000 words.

But, he said, “I knew even as I was writing it, it was all dead on the page. It just wasn't coming to life for me, because I didn't have the characters yet. I didn’t have the people of the novel yet, and those took their sweet time. It took another 22 years and six books later before my characters finally appeared to me.”

What finally appeared on the page was a savagely funny and romantic tale of two young lovers on the run from a cuckolded husband’s goons.

On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Barry joins Miller to talk about the entwined histories of America and Ireland and how he deftly uses comedy to combat a sense of fatalism. He also shares his experience narrating his own audiobooks, which he finds crucial for refining his stories.

Guest:

• Kevin Barry is the author of many books, including “Night Boat to Tangier” and “Beatlebone.” His new novel is “The Heart in Winter.”

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She can accept the praise. But the title beloved? She’s not into it.

That’s just one of the many stories that unspooled over the course of Erdrich’s conversation Tuesday night on stage with MPR News host Kerri Miller for Talking Volumes.

In front of a sold-out crowd, Erdrich talked about how growing up in the Red River Valley — where her new novel, “The Mighty Red,” is set — shaped her, why writing villains is a particular kind of torture and how the relatable and generous relationship between Crystal and Kismet in “The Mighty Red” was influenced by her own experience raising four daughters.

And oh yes. Why she squirms at “beloved.”

It’s a funny, surprising, candid and warm conversation, the third in the 2024 Talking Volumes season. Powwow singer Joe Rainey was the musical guest.

There’s one Talking Volumes event left: Another Minnesota author, Kate DiCamillo, will join Miller on Oct. 29 for the finale of the 25th anniversary season. Tickets are available here.

That’s why MPR News host Kerri Miller traveled to Worthington for the final Rural Voice town hall of the 2024 season. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Nobles County, where Worthington is located, is Minnesota’s most rapidly diversifying county. In 2020, the county’s population was 43 percent people of color, up from two-thirds white in 2010.

Much of that diversity comes from immigrants who move to southwest Minnesota for job opportunities. And while there have been setbacks, Worthington has worked hard to incorporate the new residents into their community.

What have Worthington residents learned? How can other rural communities ensure everyone thrives as immigrants put down roots?

That was the topic of lively discussion at the Rural Voice town hall, held at Forbidden Barrel Brewing Company on Thursday night. Leaders from Worthington’s various immigrant communities shared what’s worked — and what hasn’t. And longtime Worthington residents discussed how the community has made conscious efforts to be welcoming and inclusive — while admitting they still have work to do.

If you missed any of the other Rural Voice discussions, you can find them all on the MPR News website. The season kicked off at the State Fair, where rural community leaders pondered the challenges and rewards of living in rural Minnesota. Miller then traveled to Red Wing to talk about how to grow civic-minded communities and to Detroit Lakes to discuss conservation-driven agriculture. The season finished in Worthington.

She joined host Kerri Miller on stage to talk about the vulnerability inherent in her new book of essays, “We’re Alone.” They also talked about the challenges facing the Haitian-American community at this moment and how Danticat’s own family — who moved to American when she was 12 — faced the immigrant journey.

Speaking of the violent threats facing the Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio, Danticat said: “It reminds me of a collective fragility, right? One of the things that is very precarious for immigrants, especially new arrived immigrants, is this idea that we don’t always get to decide where we call home. … And it can go generations, where you think, ‘Oh I thought I was home, but this person who has more power thinks this is not my home, and they have the mechanisms to disavow me of that notion.’”

There was plenty of laughter too, including Danticat’s surprising confession about the weirdest thing she’s brought with her on book tour, how she navigates being an author on social media and what it means to her to be a “witnessing writer.” Plus, there was evocative music from Minneapolis musician LAAMAR.

You can still get tickets online for the rest of the 25th season of Talking Volumes, which will feature Alice Hoffman, Louise Erdrich and Kate DiCamillo.

Could rural Minnesota communities also lead the way when it comes to conservation farming?

MPR News host Kerri Miller brought that topic to Buck Mills Brewery in Detroit Lakes on Monday, Sept. 9, for a Rural Voice town hall discussion. Farmers, biologists, agriculture leaders and community members gathered to talk about what’s already being done and what potential remains.

They discussed everything from how to cultivate a mindset shift in farmers to how to incentivize regenerative practices. They also addressed how consumers around the state can play a role in helping Minnesota farms be good stewards of the land.

This is the third Rural Voice town hall of the 2024 season. Past discussions include the launch at the State Fair and a conversation held in Red Wing about building civic-minded communities.

The final town hall will be in Worthington on Thursday, Sept. 19, when Miller will host a dialogue about the interplay between rural Minnesota communities and the newest wave of immigrants who are making homes there.

Sober for decades after years of addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine, he became a model of success and redemption. He started working at the Hazelden Betty Ford, and in 2006, he published a vulnerable memoir, “Broken,” about his journey out of addiction.

But then he was prescribed pain killers after some dental work. And he found himself addicted again. Only this time, he had a public persona. People looked to him for hope. And he found opioids a much harder substance to break free from.

What happened next is captured in his new memoir, “Broken Open: What Painkillers Taught Me about Life and Recovery.” Moyers said it changed his focus from sobriety to recovery, and it caused him to rethink how addicts can get there.

This week, he joins host Kerri Miller in the studio for an conversation about what true recovery looks like. “It’s really messy,” he says. “It’s particularly messy for those of us who are public advocates for organizations like Hazelden Betty Ford who are putting their stories out there to inspire others to get well. My story has helped thousands and thousands of people, and I’m glad for it. But there’s more to it, which is why I have to tell this story.”

Guest:

• William C. Moyers is the vice president of public affairs and community relations at the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation. His new memoir “Broken Open: What Painkillers Taught Me about Life and Recovery.”

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That was the central question animating the Rural Voice community discussion MPR News host Kerri Miller led at the Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing on Thursday.

She was joined by political scientist and Minnesota native Brian Klaas, who set the stage by describing the bleak realities of the political landscape in America right now. People feel disempowered and divided. Trust in institutions is low. Democracy feels fragile.

But the citizens of Red Wing believe there is hope. They shared stories from their own community of how real problems have been solved, despite political differences.

They talked through some of the obstacles, like how to be more inclusive and how to deal with the constant drumbeat of negativity in online spaces. And Klaas gave examples of how citizen assemblies — a relatively new process to this country — can break through the partisan gridlock.

This is the second Rural Voice conversation of the 2024 season, which launched at the Minnesota State Fair. Rural Voice is a series of town halls hosted by Miller about the rewards and challenges of making a home in rural America.

The 2023 season finale of Talking Volumes brought author and columnist Margaret Renkl to Minnesota hours after the first snow carpeted our Northern landscape.

She declared it “magical” — a theme familiar to those who’ve read her New York Times columns or her newest book, “The Comfort of Crows.”

In it, the self-described backyard naturalist details what she saw in her Tennessee half-acre backyard over the course of 52 weeks. She laughs at the bumblebees and fusses over foxes. She laments the absence of birds and butterflies that used to be proliferate. But she also refuses to give in to despair.

For those of us paying attention, she told MPR News host Kerri Miller, it would be “easy for the grief to take over.”

“But what a waste it would be if we did that,” she added. “If it’s true, that we’re going to lose all the songbirds — at least the migratory ones — how much more are we obliged to notice them and treasure them while we have them?”

Don’t miss this warm and candid conversation about the gift of nature, the solace of observation and the gospel Renkl finds in her own backyard.

And get your tickets for the 25th season of Talking Volumes, which includes authors Edwidge Danticat, Alice Hoffman, Louise Erdrich and Kate DiCamillo, here.

The question before them: How is rural Minnesota changing, and how are rural communities thriving in the midst of it?

Participants included Northland Foundation CEO Tony Sertich, who emphasized that rural communities no longer need “jobs, jobs, jobs” but “workers, workers, workers.” Teresa Kittredge from 100 Rural Women talked about the importance of mentorship in rural communities, especially when it comes to leadership paths for women. Ben Winchester, a rural sociologist at the University of Minnesota, discussed the implications of a “brain gain” in rural areas, instead of a “brain drain.” Senator Rob Kupec, DFL-Moorhead, stressed the desperate need for housing, a point everyone agreed on, including Kitty Mayo, editor at Lake County Press. Scott Marquardt, president of the Southwest Initiative Foundation, shared his excitement over the potential for renewable energy and innovation in rural parts of Minnesota.

Other urgent issues mentioned: the need for more robust child care in rural areas, the importance of mental health services and fresh ways to welcome newcomers.

If you are rural living, rural loving or just “rural curious,” you don’t want to miss this conversation at 9 a.m. Monday, Sept. 2. And then get involved. Miller is taking Rural Voice on the road in September. She’ll be in Red Wing on Sept. 5 to talk about how to build civic-minded communities; Detroit Lakes on Sept. 9 to discuss sustainable agriculture; and Worthington on Sept. 19 to consider how rural communities thrive when immigrants put down roots. Register online to attend.

Sophia, a 20-something playwright, has invited her father, a famous and provocative British novelist, to come see her new work. As the play begins, he is shocked to realize he recognizes the set. It’s a replica of the kitchen in his vacation home near Sicily. Then the lead actor saunters onstage wearing the author’s favorite shirt and proceeds to have loud sex with a woman he just picked up at a bar. The audience roars. The author is undone.

At the same moment, Sophia is having lunch with her mother at a nearby cafe and fretting over what her father will think of the play. Her mother, the writer’s ex-wife, is both sympathetic and cavalier, weary of dealing with self-absorbed artists and yet unable to abandon her martyrdom.

Who is the hypocrite here? All of them.

Hamya’s novel is a bracing, complex and uncompromising look at the generation conflicts in our present age. She joins MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about “The Hypocrite” and so much more — including our current cancel culture, how to write a play within a novel and why she took pains to avoid writing actual sex scenes in her book.

Guest:

• Jo Hamya is a London-based writer. “The Hypocrite” is her second novel.

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More and more Americans are living mired in resentment, says Bruni, convinced that they are losing because someone else is winning. And it’s poison to our collective culture.

In his new book, “The Age of Grievance,” he writes: “[Grievance] turns everything — beer, M&M’s, Skittles, restaurant chains, theme parks, athletic teams, athletic competitions — into cultural battlefields. For many Americans, the war zone is infinite.”

This week, Bruni joins host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas, as part of our Democracy in America series, to discuss how we got here and how we move forward. In the age of toxic social media and divided national politics, can we learn to inoculate ourselves and our communities against grievance?

Guest:

• Frank Bruni is a longtime correspondent and opinion columnist for The New York Times. In 2021, he started teaching at Duke University’s school of public policy. His new book is “The Age of Grievance.”

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“They would fall down to my ankles,” he laughs. “I had to put on little sock belts every morning. I’ll never get back that time.”

But no matter. He was committed to getting into the headspace of the Founding Fathers, because he wanted to better understand the reasoning and the intentionality of America’s foundational document

The result is his new book, “The Year of Living Constitutionally.” It’s part performative art — “I went method,” he says — and part intellectual adventure. While writing with a quill pen, lighting his house with beeswax candles and wearing a tricorn, Jacobs researched and talked to dozens of scholars about how to best interpret the Constitution.

“We see it as etched in stone,” he tells host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “But it was really deeply fluid. If we recapture that mindset, maybe we will be more flexible in our thinking today.”

Guest:

• A.J. Jacobs is a journalist and an author. His past books include “The Year of Living Biblically” and “Drop Dead Healthy.” His newest is “The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning.”

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“Grown Women” expertly probes for answers via the lives of Evelyn, Charlotte, Corinna and Camille. Resentment lingers like a cancer, even as each generation of women struggles to not repeat mistakes that wound. Is it possible for them to find a modicum of forgiveness? Or will the cycles of neglect, half-lies and emotional distance repeat?

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Johnson joins host Kerri Miller for a vulnerable conversation about mothers and daughters and trying your best, even when your best isn’t enough.

Her new novel, “This Strange Eventful History,” was inspired by that personal past. It sprawls across generations, geography and time, moving from 1940 to 2010, and across multiple points of view.

In fact, MPR News host Kerri Miller says the way Messud plays with time is one of the vital threads of the book — and Messud admits time is almost a character in the novel. “The past informs the present,” she says. “People’s dreams and hopes for the future inform the present, and in a funny way, the ghosts of the past — the people who are no longer there but whose voices swirl around in our head — make sure the past is always with us.”

Join Miller and Messud on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to take a journey into memory, time and the longing for home.

Guest:

• Claire Messud’s novels includes “The Emperor’s Children” and “The Woman Upstairs.” Her new novel is “This Strange Eventful History.”

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In short: Not lucky.

But then a chance encounter upends her life and changes her idea of what fortune really is.

Rachel Khong’s new book, “Real Americans,” is already a New York Times bestseller and one of the hottest novels of the summer. She joins MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about teasing out the truth between luck and choice, soul mates and chance.

These ruthless soldiers relied on stealth to sneak behind enemy lines — often wearing their opponent’s uniform — and destroyed supply lines, assassinated military officials and gathered critical information.

Today, we know this kind of warfare as shadow ops — which is a specialty of military historian Patrick K. O’Donnell. A roadside marker he happened to see in rural Virginia ignited years of research into the Civil War era special forces who were tasked by President Lincoln to undertake spy operations and secrete missions against Confederate units.

This week, he joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold ideas to talk about his new book, “The Unvanquished,” which masterfully tells the story of this forgotten chapter of history.

Today, she’s a published author and a professor of literature at St. Catherine University. But the road from there to here wasn’t as straight-forward as you might think.

Coleman joins host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas this week to talk about what happened in the in-between. Some of it is detailed in her new collection of personal essays, “Traveling without Moving: Essays from a Black Woman Trying to Survive in America.”

But the deeper story is held in Coleman’s body, in her voice, in her strength. Don’t miss this vulnerable and moving conversation about mothers and ancestors, writing and truth-telling and the power of being a teacher.

Guest:

• Taiyon J. Coleman is a poet, a author and a literature professor at St. Paul’s St. Catherine University. Her new book is “Traveling without Moving.”

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But social scientist Robert Mark Rank says random chance governs far more of our lives that most of us want to admit.

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Rank joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to talk about his new book, “The Random Factor.” He shares how luck and chance play a crucial role in shaping history, the natural world and our everyday lives.

In her heart, she just wants to finish her senior year and get back to Chicago as quickly as possible.

But when she learns the books are being removed by a group of parents trying to ban literature they deem as obscene, she is enraged.

Will her values force her to act, even if doing so puts a target on her back? Or is the fight not worth the cost?

That’s the premise of Samira Ahmed’s new YA novel, “This Book Won’t Burn.” No stranger to book bans herself, Ahmed joins host Kerri Miller this week on Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about the freedom to read and how teenagers today are finding the courage to act against a national movement to ban books.

Dystopian novels aren’t known for being hopeful.

But that’s exactly what Leif Enger brings to the genre with his new book, “I Cheerfully Refuse.”

The beloved Minnesota author joined MPR News host Kerri Miller at the Sheldon Theatre in Red Wing on June 4 for a special “on the road” version of Talking Volumes.

Their conversation revolved around books: the unpredictable journey of writing them, the sometimes haphazard way of finding them, the way a good book leaves a mark that cannot be erased. As Enger’s protagonist Rainy says, “I banged and barged through dozens and hundreds of books. Did I understand it? Not by half, but when it thunders you know your chest is shaking.”

They also touched on how to maintain hope when the world around you feels like it’s going up in flames. “I Cheerfully Refuse” is set in the “near future” when climate change, wealth concentration and religious zealots who are proudly illiterate flourish.

But Rainy and his cherished wife, Lark, “refuse apocalypse in all its forms and work cheerfully against it.” When tragedy strikes, and Rainy is forced to set out in a small sailboat on a near-sentient Lake Superior, hoping to reunite with Lark, the quest unfolds.

Spoiler alert: Despair never wins.

Guest:

• Leif Enger is the author of many books, including the 2001 breakout hit, “Peace Like a River.” His new novel is “I Cheerfully Refuse.” Before he became an author, Enger worked as a reporter for MPR News. He lives in Duluth with his wife, Robin.

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It’s not a morbid or depressing question to Alua Arthur. She’s a death doula, and she firmly believes that giving thought to that question is the key to living a meaningful life.

Arthur herself thinks about dying a lot. As she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, she has detailed plans for what she’d like her deathbed to be like. But more importantly, she says living with an awareness of mortality helps her live with intention.

“Every day that I live is a day that I can get closer to the life that I actually want,” she says.

Arthur’s new book, “Briefly Perfectly Human” is both memoir and a surprisingly joyful treatise on why facing mortality is the key to living well. Don’t miss this wise, tender and inspiring conversation.

Guest:

• Alua Arthur is a recovering attorney and the founder of Going With Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization. Her new book is “Briefly Perfectly Human.”

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In Lea Carpenter’s new spy novel, “Ilium,” we meet our young and restless unnamed narrator on a day when she’s urging herself to be less mundane, to take more risks.

She has no idea that the spies she’ll soon be working for want her precisely because she’s inexperienced, untested and ordinary.

She quickly gets pulled into a high-stakes mission against a target who has a complicated backstory when it comes to American intelligence forces.

Carpenter joined spy novel enthusiast Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. They talked about how Carpenter’s own family history inspired her interest in America’s intelligence agencies, why women are exceptionally good spies, and how family life both complicates and clarifies the work.

Guest:

• Lea Carpenter is a novelist and a screenwriter. Her new book is “Ilium.”

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Grief is a rational response. So are the questions novelist and conservationist Lydia Millet articulates in her new book, “We Loved It All.” A blend of memoir and ecological truth-telling, Millet’s first nonfiction work examines what the vanishing will mean for the coming generations and for our sense of self.

“No one wants to tell our children how glorious it was before you were around,” she writes.

Millet joins host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about how she carries hope, even as she mourns the destruction in the natural world.

Guest:

• Lydia Millet is a novelist and conservationist. Her new book is, “We Loved It All: A Memory of Life.”

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But our favorite moments come when host Kerri Miller sits down with Minnesota writers to talk about story, craft and how calling this state home influences both.

This week, we took a look back at some conversations with notable Minnesota authors, including Shannon Gibney, who just won her third Minnesota Book Award, Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang and not-ashamed-to-be-a-mystery-writer William Kent Krueger.

But the heart of the book — her push-pull relationship with her mother and her process of uncovering a true self — is as old as time.

Figueroa’s mother was taken from Puerto Rico as a young child and raised in a New York City orphanage, separated from her native language, culture and ancestry. As many immigrants before her, she learned to keep her heritage distant, as a way to assimilate into a new country.

But Figueroa chafed at the disconnect — “my mother did not know how to define herself on her own terms” — and set out to remember.

As she tells Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, “[My mother] was concerned about how we were seen. She wanted to be included. Anything she could do to get closer to ‘white identity’ made it easier for her.”

“As a daughter, I respect those were the choices she was forced to make — and I feel like my life is lived in opposition to that.”

Guest:

• Jamie Figueroa is the author of the acclaimed novel, “Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer.” Her new book is “Mother Island.”

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Among other things, that meant acknowledging her kinship with others who had gone before her.

In her gorgeous new book, “Fi: A Memoir of My Son,” she writes: “The way a pilot sees wind and clouds, or a sailor reads currents and water, I look unconsciously for stories to remind me where I am, to remind me that, whatever I’m going through, millions have been here before, are here now, will be here again.”

She talks about finding solace in that continuity on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. As she tells host Kerri Miller: “As I was running to my son’s body … I knew that I would be ‘over the grief’ when I was able to find gratitude for the grief. I knew I would find out the quality of my God, for real. And I knew I had joined the vast throng of women who had raised me on the Southern African continent who had been here before.”

Don’t miss this thoughtful, tender and vulnerable conversation about non-linear grief — grief that is “a braid and a spiral and a knot.”

Guest:

• Alexandra Fuller is the author of many books, including “Don’t Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight,” and "Quiet Until the Thaw.” Her new memoir is “Fi: A Memoir of My Son.”

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Ryan is the central character of Don Winslow’s sweeping crime trilogy that draws parallels to movies like “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas.” Readers first met Ryan as a mid-level Irish-American mobster in New England in “City on Fire,” which came out in 2022. One year later, Winslow released “City on Dreams,” which follows Ryan to Hollywood. And now, in 2024, Ryan is a Las Vegas casino mogul struggling to leave his life of crime in “City in Ruins.”

It brings both the series and Winslow’s writing career to a close.

But not before he joins host Kerri Miller one more time on Big Books and Bold Ideas.

Don’t miss this warm and intimate conversation that pulls at the fascinating threads of Winslow’s past — including his years spent as a Shakespeare director at Oxford, his stint as a private investigator and his abiding love of Africa. They also talk about how surfing taught Winslow to trust the writing process, why it took him 30 years to write the Danny Ryan series, and why he is confident that “City in Ruins” is his last book.

Guest:

• Don Winslow has written 21 novels, including “The Border, “The Force, and “Savages.” His new book, “City in Ruins” completes his Danny Ryan trilogy and his writing career.

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Elizabeth Cobbs says that’s because we don’t know our history. Her latest book, “Fearless Women,” chronicles how the fight for women’s rights began at the founding of our country, when Abigail Adams urged her husband to “remember the ladies” (and her plea was met with laughter), and continues through today.

Cobbs argues that women’s rights and democracy itself are intertwined, that as rights were afforded to women, the country itself became stronger. Each chapter of “Fearless Women” tells the story of women who fought for a new right: the right to learn, the right to speak in public, the right to own property, and the right to vote, among others. It is a timeline of feminism in America.

This week, Cobbs joined host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about the freedom inherent in feminism, why it’s not partisan — despite what some insist — and why many of the women she wrote about in her book have been overlooked by history.

Guest:

• Elizabeth Cobbs is a historian and the Melbern Glasscock Chair in American history at Texas A&M University. Her latest book is “Fearless Women: Feminist Patriots from Abigail Adams to Beyoncé.”

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It follows a complicated female friendship that spans decades and countries. Growing up in 1940s Port-au-Prince, Gertie and Sisi are enthralled with each other — until their families discover a secret and force them apart. As girls, they didn’t understand why. But as they grow and weave in and out of each other’s lives, the secrets and lies become a burden to great to carry.

Chancy joined host Kerri Miller for this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about the grief of a ruptured friendship, the love of ancestral lands and how Haiti today bears both the scars and the hopes of its past.

Guest:

• Myriam J. A. Chancy is the author of many novels, including the prize-winning, “What Storm, What Thunder.” Her new book is “Village Weavers.”

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The war changed all that. Hunted by North Vietnamese soldiers, Yang’s maternal family had to flee into the jungle and live a desperate existence for years. Eventually, her mother met a boy also in hiding, and they married. She was 16.

It was an extraordinary chapter in her mother’s remarkable life. Yet when Yang suggested that she record the full story, her mother doubted anyone would care.

Thankfully, Yang persisted. Her new book, “Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother” is one attempt to capture the drama of her mother’s life.

From a riverside village in Laos to a bleak refugee camp in Thailand to a new home in St. Paul, Yang tells the story through her mother’s eyes and captures the grief, determination and pride of the immigrant journey.

Yang joined host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to share what it was like to record the unvarnished truth of her mother’s life and why she couldn’t write this book until now.

Guest:

• Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American speaker and writer. She is the award-winning of author of many books, including several about her family, including “The Latehomecomer” and “The Song Poet.” Her latest is “Where Rivers Part.”

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For journalist Susan Casey, it was transformative — even emotional. Her latest book, “The Underworld,” is a homage to the abyss and the scientists who explore it.

She also describes her own dives in deep-sea submersibles, through the oceanic “twilight zone,” which is rich with bioluminescent creatures, down to depths of 5,000 meters, where utter darkness still teems with life.

Casey joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to share stories about her dives and what she experienced in the abyss. She also talked about how the deep submersible community reacted to the tragic end of the Oceangate Titan sub last summer (“people were watching the creation of that sub with real fear”) and warns of the growing interest in deep sea mining.

Guest:

• Susan Casey is a science journalist who specializes in writing about the ocean. Her latest book is, “The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean.”

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But for neuroscientist Charan Ranganath, more compelling than what we remember is why we remember.

“The human brain is not a memorization machine; it's a thinking machine,” he writes in his new book “Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters.”

Ranganath, a leading memory researcher, joined MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to talk about how memory works (spoiler: we’re not designed to remember everything) and how it shapes who we are today.

Guest:

• Charan Ranganath is a neuroscientist and a director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at UC Davis. His new book is “Why We Remember.”

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It’s a theme familiar to readers who loved Orange’s first novel, “There There.” In fact, “Wandering Stars” functions as both a prequel and a sequel to that best-seller.

Orange joined MPR News Host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to discuss how he weaves stories that are both historical and modern in an attempt to highlight the importance of family and honoring ancestors as a way to rebuild identity and belonging.

Guest:

• Tommy Orange is an author and a teacher at the Institute for American Indian Arts. His first book, “There There,” was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. His new novel is “Wandering Stars.”

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As a result, trust in doctors and scientists has plummeted. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that Americans who say they have a great deal of confidence in scientists dropped from 39 percent in 2020 to 23 percent in 2023. And that decline happened across party lines.

What went wrong? How did public health officials alienate a populace they aimed to protect? Can an eroded sense of trust be restored?

Dr. Sandro Galea, epidemiologist and dean at the Boston University School of Public Health, seeks to some of those questions in his new book "Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time."

Galea joined host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to share his post-pandemic diagnosis and offer remedies for how public health can transcend absolutism and intolerance in order to promote well-being for all.

Guest:

• Dr. Sandro Galea is a physician, an epidemiologist and the dean at Boston University's School of Public Health. His new book is, "Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time."

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Americans come to that question with significantly different views. And what American democracy was when this country was founded isn’t necessarily what it is today or what it will be in the future. Democracy is dynamic.

Heather Cox Richardson spends a lot of time thinking about democracy. She’s a historian and the force behind the most popular newsletter on Substack, with more than 1.3 million subscribers. In 2023, she released her latest book, “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America,” which is a reflection on the the evolution of American democracy.

On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Richardson joined host Kerri Miller to parse the current condition of democracy in America and lay out how the system can be exploited by authoritarians or supported by the populace.

Guest:

• Heather Cox Richardson is an author, a historian, a professor Boston College and the writer of Letters from an American, the most popular newsletter on Substack. Her latest book is “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.”

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On her former weekday show, she regularly dialoged with leaders like Jenan Mohajir from Interfaith America, activist and author Anne Lamott, theologian Jemar Tisby, Sister Joan Chittister, and evangelical disrupter Rachel Held Evans. She even did a year-long series with women from a variety of faith backgrounds in 2019.

So it seemed fitting, during the 2024 winter member drive, to return to this theme and remember a few of the best conversations.

Included are portions of Miller’s recent discussion with Pastor Amy Butler, who penned the memoir, “Beautiful and Terrible Things;” Miller’s 2019 conversation with podcaster Misha Euceph about being Muslim in America; and a snippet of the 2023 Talking Volumes season finale with author Margaret Renkl about why Renkl left the Catholic church of her upbringing and found a new one in nature.

Vanessa Chan adeptly explores this concept in her debut novel, “The Storm We Made” — a work of historical fiction set in her home country of Malaysia, which was inspired by stories her grandmother would tell.

The main character is Cecily, a discontented housewife in 1930s Malaya, who is charmed into becoming a spy for the Japanese during the British occupation. She is increasingly disillusioned with the colonizing force and intrigued by a vision of “an Asia for Asians.” But her decisions ripple through the lives of her children in unforeseen and disastrous ways.

Chan doesn’t judge.

“Morality is very much dependent on circumstances,” the author tells host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas. “You cannot tell when faced with survival whether or not you’ll be as heroic or as cowardly as you think you’re going to be.”

Tune in this week for a warm conversation about roots, family lore and unanswered questions.

“I wrote about the ambiguity of right and wrong when survival is at stake,” Chan says in her forward. “I wrote because, at the end of the day, remembering is how we love.”

Guest:

• Vanessa Chan is a Malaysian author. Her debut novel, “The Storm We Made,” was one of the most anticipated books of 2024 and has sold rights in more than 20 countries.

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“The Sisterhood” is a meticulously researched, seven-decade history of women who worked behind the scenes at America’s premier foreign intelligence agency. Mundy details how women opened up new avenues of recruiting for assets, formed a team that uncovered a Russian mole operating within the agency and rooted out where Osama bin Laden was hiding.

She joined host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to share stories of the women who fought through blatant sexism to became some of the CIA’s most ingenious operatives.

Guest:

• Liza Mundy is an award-winning journalist and the New York Times bestselling author of five books. Her latest is “The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA.”

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Yet her newest book, “To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul,” is memoir — a classification she initially resisted. But as she tells MPR News host Kerri Miller, she eventually saw that her own story is a kind of microcosm of America’s story. It’s a meditation on who we’ve been, who we are and who we want to become.

On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Smith joins Miller to expand on the ideas in her latest work, as it examines the nature of power, freedom, race, prayer, her parent’s lives, her own drinking and what she calls "the conundrum of history.”

Guest:

• Tracy K. Smith’s poetry has won many awards, including a Pulitzer. She was the U.S. poet laureate from 2017 to 2019. Currently, she is a professor of English and African American studies at Harvard University. Her new book is “To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul.”

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Unlike our global peers, the U.S. is seeing a steady decline in college enrollment and graduation rates, especially among young men. Since 1992, the sticker price for four-year private colleges has almost doubled and more than doubled for four-year public colleges, even after adjusting for inflation. Student debt is paralyzing. And Gen Z is watching. About half believe a high school diploma is sufficient to “ensure financial security.”

What can higher education do?

Macalester College President Emeritus Brian Rosenberg has some thoughts — but he admits, many in academia won’t like them. His provocative new book is “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It: Resistance to Change in Higher Education,” and he joins host Kerri Miller this week for a discussion that names those things. Is it possible for colleges and universities to stay relevant and adapt to a changing world?

Guest:

• Brian Rosenberg is president emeritus of Macalester College and is currently a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His new book is “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It:” Resistance to Change in Higher Education.”

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“There are two obvious cloaks of secrecy that surrounds the government cover-up of its understanding of what UFOs and UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomena) are today,” Graff tells MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

“One level is we don’t know what level of public UFO sightings are our own government’s secret development projects.”

“The other is that … some chunk of UAPS are advanced adversary technology being tested against us — drones from other countries. So the military doesn’t want to say what it’s detected lest it give away too much.”

But is there alien life? Graff feels certain there is. He just doesn’t see proof that it’s visiting earth.

His new book looks at the history of UFO sightings in the United States, including the large reports of flying saucers after WWII, UFO conspiracy theories after Watergate and the U.S. government’s efforts in recent years to engage in more open dialogue about extraterrestrial life.

Guest:

• Garrett Graff is a journalist and the author of many books. His latest is “UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government’s Search for Alien Life Here — and Out There.”

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To gain context, we invited three historians and authors from different regions of the country to reflect on this American moment. Can history be a guide to where we are? Do we have the chaos and divisiveness we deserve? How do we approach what comes next with clarity and perspective?

Guests:

• Carol Anderson a historian and professor of African-American studies at Emory University. She’s the author of many books, including “White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide” and “One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy.”
• Elizabeth Cobbs is a historian, an author and the Melbern Glasscock Chair at Texas A&M University. Her most recent book is “Fearless Women: Feminist Patriots from Abigail Adams to Beyoncé.”
• Eric Foner is one of the nation’s leading historians and the author of many award-winning books on the Civil War and Reconstruction, including “The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution.” He is also a professor emeritus at Columbia University.

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Those words rooted Amy Butler through some of the darkest moments of her life. As Butler slowly embraced her call to be a pastor, she was rejected by her conservative evangelical family, who doesn’t believe women should be in pastoral roles.

She was the first woman ever appointed to lead the historic Riverside Church in New York City, but the challenges of breaking the “stained glass ceiling” almost caused her to lose her faith.

In her new memoir, “Beautiful and Terrible Things,” Butler takes us inside her life story. She covers joyful and painful moments, including the loss of a child, her unexpected divorce and the hardships of being a woman in ministry.

But ultimately, as she tells MPR News host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, she found that vulnerability is worth it.

Butler writes in the introduction, “The invitation to become who we’re meant to be happens at the intersection of human pain and divine hope, and almost always in the context of relationship.”

Guest:

• Rev. Amy Butler is currently pastoring a Baptist church in her home state of Hawaii. Her new book is “Beautiful and Terrible Things: Faith, Doubt and Discovering a Way Back To Each Other.”

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But there is one problem: they have wildly disparate world views. Barbara is a baby boomer who lives in rural Tennessee. She supports Trump, listens to conservative media and is a deeply passionate evangelical Christian.

Jedidiah is almost the opposite. He’s a gay man, who lives on the West Coast and is politically progressive.

But they love each other. And Jedidiah is keenly aware of his mother’s age and the passing of time. So they set off on their joint adventure, hoping for fresh insight into the complex questions many are asking today: How do we stay in relationship when it hurts? When are boundaries needed? Is it possible to love someone who disagrees with you on almost everything?

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Jedidiah Jenkins joined host Kerri Miller for a thoughtful, funny and reflective conversation about mothers, nuance and the key ingredient needed to stay in painful relationships.

Guest:

• Jedidiah Jenkins is an author and adventurer. His latest memoir is “Mother, Nature: A 5000-Mile Journey to Discover if a Mother and Son Can Survive Their Differences.”

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It was on that jubilant note that he spoke with host Kerri Miller about his love for the art form of words. In the past, he has said that he finds “the writing of a poem a kind of plunging, a willful dive below the surface of who I am.”

During their conversation, Jackson explored those ideas with Miller. He spoke about how to avoid solipsism when writing poetry, how his childhood faith taught him the musicality of words and why it’s crucial that poetry be a mode of inquiry, not a collection of answers.

Guest:

• Major Jackson is the author of six books of poetry, most recently “Razzle Dazzle.” He teaches writing at Vanderbilt University and is host of APM’s daily poetry podcast, The Slowdown.

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But to wildlife, roads are dangerous divisions of habitat. Around a million animals are killed by cars every day. Roads change migration patterns, cut off animals from their food sources and create noise so loud that it drowns out the ability for some animals to communicate with each other or hunt their prey.

But road ecologists are working on solutions. In his new book, “Crossings,” Science Journalist Ben Goldfarb lays out the repercussion of roads and invites us to rethink their design. For example, California is planning to build a literal animal crossing over Highway 101, to allow safe passage for a variety of creatures.

Goldfarb joined host Kerri Miller on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas to share what he learned when he started to research road ecology and how scientists are using innovative solutions to minimize the damage roads cause.

Guest:

• Ben Goldfarb is an environmental journalist and author. His latest book is “Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet.”

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In one family, pizza crust is known as “pizza bones.” In another, children who weren’t allowed to say fart were instructed to use the word “foof” instead.

This Thursday, MPR News host Kerri Miller talked about “familect” with word wizard Anatoly Liberman.

Guest:

• Anatoly Liberman is a linguist and professor of languages at the University of Minnesota. His latest book is, “Take My Word For It: A Dictionary of English Idioms.”

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So he kept his family tightly controlled, separate from outside influences that could contaminate.

It was in that environment that Sinclair first grew and then stifled. Her father’s Rastafari faith was all-encompassing. While her mother taught her the music of nature and encouraged her to read, her father became obsessed with keeping his daughters pure. So they had few friends or hobbies, outside of schoolwork. Sinclair dreaded adolescence, when she knew menstruation would make her unclean. She grudgingly kept her dreadlocks — a symbol of Rastafari piety — and chafed under her father’s gospel that good Rasta women are submissive and quiet.

But Sinclair found her voice in poetry. In her new memoir, “How to Say Babylon,” Sinclair recounts her journey from a subdued and sheltered daughter into a strong and self-assertive woman.

This week on Big Book and Bold Ideas, Sinclair joined host Kerri Miller to talk about the perils of fundamentalism and patriarchy, in all its forms, and how she wrote a memoir about her childhood that both honors her family and her own truth.

Guest:

• Safiya Sinclair is a Jamaican poet and memoirist. Her debut poetry collection, “Cannibal,” won several awards. Her new memoir is “How to Say Babylon.”

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That was the topic MPR News host Kerri Miller tackled Monday at 9 a.m. for a special live edition of her regular Friday show, Big Books and Bold Ideas. Instead of chatting with an author, Miller took calls and chatted with Glory Edim, the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, and Julie Buckles, the owner of Honest Dog Books in Bayfield, Wis.

Before the show, we asked our social media followers what their favorite books of the year were and the top responses were: “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus, “Tom Lake” by Ann Patchett and “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver.

Kerri’s picks

• “Age of Vice” by Deepti Kapoor
• “How to Say Babylon” by Safiya Sinclair
• “State of Wonder” by Ann Patchett
• “The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After” by Julie Yip-Williams
• “The Last Ranger” by Peter Heller
• "Tom Lake" by Ann Patchett

Julie’s picks

• “Good Night, Irene” by Luis Alberto Urrea
• “Bel Canto” by Ann Patchett
• “The Paris Bookseller” by Kerri Maher
• “The Diary of a Bookseller” by Shaun Bythell
• “You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir” by Maggie Smith
• “The River: A Novel” by Peter Heller

Glory’s picks

• “Company: Stories” by Shannon Sanders
• “Witness” by Jamel Brinkley
• “The Fraud” by Zadie Smith
• “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker
• “Family Lore” by Elizabeth Acevedo
• “The Unsettled” by Ayana Mathis
• “Moonrise Over New Jessup” by Jamila Minnicks

Caller’s picks

• “Winter’s Song: A Hymn to the North” by TD Mischke
• “Foster” by Claire Keegan
• “West with Giraffes: A Novel” by Lynda Rutledge
• “Angry Water” by Allen Theisen
• “The Seed Keeper” by Diane Wilson
• “The Comfort of Crows” by Margaret Renkl
• “Lessons in Chemistry” by Bonnie Garmus
• “The Jungle Book: by Rudyard Kipling
• “Mr. Texas: A Novel” by Lawrence Wright
• “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America” by Heather Cox Richardson
• “The Measure” by Nikki Erlick
• “A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them” by Timothy Egan
• “Whiskey When We’re Dry: A Novel” by John Larison
• “Chenneville” by Paulette Jiles

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The day is coming. But since it’s not possible quite yet, the would-be space traveler can do the next best thing: Take the scenic route through the galaxy with astronomer and science communicator Philip Plait in his new book, “Under Alien Skies.”

Written as a lively adventure through the cosmos, Plait uses both the latest scientific research and a lively imagination to transport readers to ten of the most astonishing sights space has to offer.

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Plait joined host Kerri Miller to give listeners a personal tour through the galaxy.

Guest:

• Philip Plait is an astronomer, a self-proclaimed sci-fi dork and all-around science enthusiast. His latest book is “Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer's Guide to the Universe.” He also writes the Bad Astronomy newsletter.

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She declared it “magical” — a theme familiar to those who’ve read her New York Times columns or her new book, “The Comfort of Crows.”

In it, the self-described backyard naturalist details what she saw in her Tennessee half-acre backyard over the course of 52 weeks. She laughs at the bumblebees and fusses over foxes. She laments the absence of birds and butterflies that used to be proliferate. But she also refuses to give in to despair.

For those of us paying attention, she told MPR host Kerri Miller, it would be “easy for the grief to take over.”

“But what a waste it would be if we did that,” she added. “If it’s true, that we’re going to lose all the songbirds — at least the migratory ones — how much more are we obliged to notice them and treasure them while we have them?”

Don’t miss this warm and candid conversation about the gift of nature, the solace of observation and the gospel Renkl finds in her own backyard. Musical guest The Dollys rounded out the evening.

Guest:

• Margaret Renkl is an award-winning author and a New York Times columnist. Her latest book is “The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year.”

Use the audio player or video player above to listen to the conversation.

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The trauma surgeon who worked to save many of those officers — Dr. Brian H. Williams — made headlines when he spoke at a press conference after the incident. In an emotional moment, he confessed his complicated feelings as a Black man in America to the mix of race, policing and guns.

“I want the Dallas P.D. to also see me, a Black man, and understand that I support you, I will defend you, and I will care for you,” he said.

“But that doesn't mean that I do not fear you,” he added. “That doesn’t mean that if you approach me I will not immediately have a visceral reaction and start worrying for my personal safety.”

It was that moment that catapulted Dr. Williams into the national spotlight and pushed him to offer a diagnosis on a system that is failing almost everyone.

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Dr. Williams talks with MPR News host Kerri Miller about that fateful day in Dallas. They also talk about what led him to medicine in the first place, the systemic racism he witnessed in the health care field and why he still believes healing is possible.

Guest:

• Dr. Brian H. Williams is a trauma surgeon, an Air Force Academy alumnus and a former congressional health policy advisor. His new book is “The Bodies Keep Coming: Dispatches from a Black Trauma Surgeon on Racism, Violence, and How We Heal.”

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He’s critic of populist politics. He’s a critic of history. He’s a critic of the country where he was born, Vietnam, and he’s a critic of the country he calls home, the United States. He’s even a critic of his own memories.

But Nguyen says his captious lens isn’t meant to blister. It’s simply meant to reveal truth. And if you write truthfully, you will likely offend.

Nguyen joined host Kerri Miller on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater for the third conversation in the 2023 Talking Volumes season. Their discussion was candid and eloquent, poignant and funny, as they talked and shared photos from Nguyen’s new memoir, “A Man of Two Faces.”

They were joined by musician D’Lourdes, who sang two songs off their new EP, “softer, for now.”

Guest:

• Viet Thanh Nguyen won the Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for his novel, “The Sympathizer.” His new book, “A Man of Two Faces” is an unconventional memoir that combines his own story of being a Vietnamese refugee with larger themes of colonization, war and perceptions about America.

Use the audio player or video player above to listen to the conversation.

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Zhang’s protagonist, a young unnamed Asian chef, decides to flee her dreary career and lies her way into becoming the head cook at a mountaintop research community, where the sky is still clear and the uber-rich work to recreate and hoard the world’s biodiversity.

The prose in “Land of Milk and Honey” is as rich and sensual as a good meal. But it is the constant trade-offs made by the chef that keep the book evolving.

This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, host Kerri Miller sat down with Zhang to talk about what moved her to write this book, how her faith background informs her view of science and why she moved from California to New York City during the pandemic.

Guest:

• C Pam Zhang is an author who currently lives in Brooklyn. Her most recent novel is “Land of Milk and Honey.”

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What ensued was a raucous two hours of honest conversation. Just a few of the topics they covered: Ann’s “shiny new attitude” about book tours, how to be a feminist while still making dinner every night, why Ann keeps a drawer stocked with $20s in her desk and — last but certainly not least — Ann’s new novel, “Tom Lake.”

Don’t miss this lively exchange, which includes music by singer-songwriter Sarah Morris and closes with a special guest appearance by the author to whom Ann dedicated “Tom Lake” — Minnesotan Kate DiCamillo.

Guests:

• Ann Patchett is the author of many beloved books, including “Commonwealth,” “The Dutch House,” “Bel Canto” and “Truth and Beauty.” Her latest novel is “Tom Lake.” She also owns Parnassus Books, an independent bookstore in Nashville, and she adores her husband, Karl — even if he doesn’t make dinner.
• Kate DiCamillo is also an author of many beloved books, including “Because of Winn-Dixie,” “Flora and Ulysses,” “The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane” and the forthcoming, “The Puppets of Spelhorst.” She is a staunch friend of Ann Patchett, which is why “Tom Lake” is dedicated to her and how she ended up on stage with Ann at Talking Volumes.

Use the audio player or video player above to listen to the conversation.

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A young servant girl, who was brought to the new world by a prosperous and indifferent family, decides to run from the desolation. But she leaves Jamestown not knowing her direction, her surroundings or even her name. Can she survive the untouched wilderness?

Groff says her new book is haunted by climate change — the fact that we, as a species, are also running into the vast unknown. But like her unnamed protagonist, she finds moments of ecstasy in the starkness of nature, times when she sees her own body experience euphoria in the midst of pain.

This week, Groff joined host Kerri Miller on Big Books and Bold Ideas for a conversation about “The Vaster Wilds.” Like her other books, this one plays with themes of feminism, religion and morality, and she dives into all those topics.

But she also reveals how many covers she and her publishing house went through before they settled on the one that was printed, and how many books she’s writing right now, simultaneously.

Guest:

• Lauren Groff is a New York Times bestselling author of several books, including “Matrix” and “Fates and Furies.” Her new novel is “The Vaster Wilds.”

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Readers had to wait 14 years for another book by Verghese, but by all accounts, his new novel was worth the wait. Oprah Winfrey named it a book club pick, called saying it was “one of the best books I’ve read in my entire life — and I’ve been reading since I was three!”

It was a pleasure to have him kick off the 2023 season of Talking Volumes. Dr. Verghese joined host Kerri Miller on stage at the Fitzgerald Theater the evening of Sept. 14 and talked about redemption, inspiration, how his “day job” as a doctor informs his writing (and vice versa) and why his belief in the essential goodness of humanity is core to his novels.

Their conversation was complimented by Kerala folk music played by local musician Nirmala Rajasekar, who was joined onstage by one of India’s premier percussionists, Thanjavur Murugaboopathi.

Guest:

• Dr. Abraham Verghese is a physician and professor at the School of Medicine at Stanford University. He is also a best-selling author. His latest novel is “The Covenant of Water.”

Use the audio player or video player above to listen to the conversation.

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For more than a decade, she was an actress based in the Twin Cities. She told stories by embodying them.

But then she and her husband — also an actor — decided to leave it all behind. They moved off the grid, to rural Wisconsin, so her husband could handcraft furniture. It was there, while learning to split wood and pump water and raise two toddlers in the midst of the chaos, that Dunbar came to the stunning conclusion that she was a storyteller — just one who had been working in the wrong art form. So she began to write.

Her first book, “The Net Beneath Us” won the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award and told the story of a young woman learning to live close off the land in Wisconsin after her husband has a logging accident. Her new novel, “A Winter’s Rime,” is also set in northern Wisconsin and plays with truths Dunbar has learned firsthand about PTSD, healing and place.

This week’s Big Book and Bold Ideas features a conversation between host Kerri Miller and Dunbar. They talk about how the rural north woods influence Dunbar’s writing, how both her books are informed by her own story and why learning to forgive one’s self might be the key to redemption.

Guest:

• Carol Dunbar is a novelist who lives off the grid in northern Wisconsin and writes from a solar-powered office on the second floor of a water tower. Her latest book is “A Winter’s Rime.”

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A creative writing professor at the fictitious Payne University, an aptly named small liberal arts college in the Midwest, Fitger is cantankerous and acid-tongued, beleaguered and inappropriate. He doesn’t really like students — and he doesn’t like England, which is where he has been pressured into leading a study abroad program.

The students on the tour are equally hapless. For the most part, this is their first trip away from home. One believes they are actually going to the Caribbean. And another remarks that she has never left her cat. Someone writes in his application that he is “a business major … for obvious reasons. There are no jobs out there for people who just want to read.” 

It’s enough to push Professor Fitger to the brink — and that is the story told in “The English Experience,” Minnesota novelist Julie Schumacher’s final book in the trilogy that follows Fitger’s academic misadventures.

This week, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Schumacher joined host Kerri Miller in the studio for a rollicking and candid conversation about how Schumacher channels Fitger, why she hopes he’s likeable in spite of all his faults, and the frustrations she shares with him about the future of academia.

Guest:

• Julie Schumacher lives in St. Paul and is a faculty member in the Creative Writing Program and the Department of English at the University of Minnesota. “The English Experience” is the completion of her trilogy about Professor Fitger.

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Macdonald, author of the best-selling “H is for Hawk,” and Blaché, an artist living in Ireland, first met online. During the COVID lockdowns, bored and restless, they started to play with the idea of writing a book together. Chapters began to fly digitally over the Irish Sea.

What resulted is “Prophet,” a fast-paced techno-thriller that centers around a lethal mystery: Someone has developed an aerosol that can weaponize nostalgia, bringing people’s happiest memories to life only to have them be killed by it.

‘Prophet’ doubles as a queer odd-couple romance, thanks to the main characters, whom Blaché and Macdonald fondly call “our terrible men.” Adam is a gruff American super solider, and Rao is a former British intelligence officer who has a gift for telling when people are lying — unless that person is Adam.

On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, MPR News host Kerri Miller talks with Macdonald and Blaché about why cowriting a book online turned out to be a raucous, joyful thing and how their shared love for tropes and pop culture influenced the book.

Guests:

• Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché cowrote “Prophet.” It will not be their last project together.

Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.

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What happens when one of those friends marries, and the other friend sees the new husband as a betrayal of their values?

That’s the premise behind British-Nigerian author Ore Agbaje-Williams debut novel, “The Three of Us.” The story plays out on a single wine- and whiskey-soaked afternoon, when the wife, husband and best friend Temi toy with the fine line between compromise and betrayal when it comes to themselves and the people they love.

On this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, Agbaje-Williams joins MPR News host Kerri Miller to discuss the power of female friendships, why her story had to unfold in a single afternoon, and how love and loyalty can shape our lives.

Guest:

• Ore Agbaje-Williams is a British-Nigerian writer. “The Three of Us” is her debut novel.

Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.

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Three years later, Cooper is out with a powerful new memoir and a National Geographic TV show he hopes will attract more people of color to the world of bird-watching.

Don’t miss this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas, when Cooper talks with host Kerri Miller about how a self-described nerdy gay kid from Long Island fell in love with our feathered friends and how the incident that pushed him into the national spotlight distracts from what he sees as the bigger issues.

He also shares stories about his work as a Marvel comics writer and has a few tips for want-to-be birders.

Guest:

• Christian Cooper is a science and comics writer and the host and consulting producer of Extraordinary Birder on National Geographic. His memoir is “Better Living Through Birding.”

Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.

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Growing up in Hastings, Minn., his family milestones were marked by dressing up, sitting in a leather booth at the Wiederholt's Supper Club, picking at a relish tray and watching the grown-ups enjoy a brandy Old Fashioned.

He even worked at a supper club across the river, in Prescott, Wisc., where he went behind the double-swinging doors and had his views about restaurant work forever changed.

So it is with a deep sense of fondness, with a side of realism, that his latest novel centers around a supper club in the fictitious northern Minnesota town of Bear Jaw.

Main character Mariel has inherited the Lakeside Club from her grandparents and is wrestling with its future — and her own. Meanwhile, her husband stands to take on his own family’s restaurant legacy, a growing chain of family diners. Which future will they pursue? And will old family wounds deepen in the process, or be healed?

This week on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Stradal joined host Kerri Miller in the studio to trade stories about their own experiences with the supper club scene. They also talked about the purpose and value of nostalgia and how Stradal works to balance sentimentality with reality in his writing.

Guest:

• J. Ryan Stradal is a native Minnesotan and a New York Times bestselling author. His latest novel is “Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club.”

Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.

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But he didn’t know she’d been on the front lines in one of the most ferocious battles, or that the nightmares she suffered her whole life stemmed from her experiences there. Like many people who’ve lived through extreme trauma, his mother mostly avoided the topic while she was alive.

As Urrea combed through her journals and scrapbooks after her death, he encountered a woman who was marked by her time serving as a Donut Dolly in the war. His new novel, “Good Night, Irene” is not a biography of his mother, but it is inspired by her courage and experiences.

This Friday, on Big Books and Bold Ideas, Urrea joined MPR News host Kerri Miller to tell stories about his mother and her fellow Donut Dollies. It’s a conversation about the power of friendship, the trauma of war, and why laughter might be the most important human quality.

Guest:

• Luis Alberto Urrea is the critically acclaimed and best-selling author of 19 books. His latest novel is “Good Night, Irene.”

Use the audio player above to listen to the podcast version of the conversation.

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