(bright music) - It doesn't matter if you've got a great animal story unless it speaks to whatever human story you're telling.

- I realized it couldn't just be a story about racing.

It would also have to be a story about race in America because of this signal contribution of the skilled Black horsemen on whose plundered labor and skills this racing industry had been built.

(bright music) - Well, hi, and welcome to the PBS Books Readers Club.

- Today, we'll meet Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks and Jamie Crichton, the new head writer of the hit PBS series, "All Creatures Great and Small," which of course is based on the beloved book series by James Herriot.

- Yeah, and we are also going to reveal our pick for next month's read, so stick around for all of that.

Hi, I am Fred Nahhat with Lauren Smith and now let's meet the rest of the PBS Books Readers Club crew.

Heather-Marie Montilla is a librarian and our national director of PBS Books and Princess Weekes is a writer and editor with a master's degree in English with a focus on literary theory.

- And hey, you are a part of this too.

We hope that you will read along with us and join the PBS Books Readers Club Facebook group to contribute your own thoughts and ideas.

Seriously, write a comment, a question, let us know where we're getting things wrong.

It happens a lot... every now and then.

So we want you to join us and this is gonna be so fun.

I can't wait for the year ahead.

So many new books, so many new authors to talk to.

We're gonna have a great time.

- It's gonna be so much fun.

I love that we're together.

I love book clubs and you are three of my favorite people and I'm so excited to be here.

- Aww, I feel the same about you.

- That's brand news, but I'm so excited to have it.

This is gonna be so much fun.

I'm so excited about this book club.

- Well, our PBS Books Readers Club feature of the month is "Horse."

We're all very excited to talk about this amazing work with Geraldine Brooks coming up.

But first, Princess, just give us the cliff notes.

What is "Horse" all about?

- So "Horse" is a really engaging book about the titular horse, which is based on the thoroughbred Lexington, which was a dominant horse in its field in the period that we're discussing and how the horse impacts the life of several characters over multiple different decades.

And the way that Brooks weaves it all together and touches on so many issues of race and class, and even gender, is just so rich and engrossing.

I really enjoyed this, like it's an excellent historical fiction.

- I love historical fiction.

I think you guys probably know that.

And this goes beyond the typical historical fiction.

So yes, of course, you have Lexington, you have the triumphs and tragedies of Lexington, but you also, as the reader, you are really faced with the impact of slavery, with where the reader has to reckon with prejudice, racism, police brutality, in so many unexpected ways.

- Absolutely.

And I think that the book really does a good job through the character of Jarret to really emphasize the solidarity and isolation that comes with enslavement and how Jarret's really forced, while he may love the horse, to find that be his only connection to like humanity and love and affection.

And that was just really rich and engaging.

And you also have through Theo, like a modern day look of how, yes, things have changed, but not as much as you would've hoped.

- Right.

- And so that's still, that isolation still continues today.

- Yeah.

- The other thing I love, love about Jarret is the archetype of the expert.

Within his realm, he's an expert, and within that realm, the topic of Black jockeys.

Fascinating.

- Oh yeah.

It's such a great topic.

Of course, being the nerd I am, I like dived into it, and I found out that during the first Kentucky Derby in 1875, 13 of 15 jockeys in the competition were African American.

- 13?

- Yes.

Lucky number in this case.

- That's amazing.

- And that Black jockeys- - I mean, that's a vast majority, 13 to 15.

- Yeah, overwhelmingly.

And so at that period between 1890 and 1899, Black jockeys dominated that industry, and unfortunately they were slowly pushed out until the early 1900s.

The last African American man, Jimmy Winkfield, was the last one to win a Triple Crown and ride for almost a century.

- That's, I mean, so fascinating to learn, but we learned about a lot of things in this book, and I thought it was really fascinating the way that Geraldine Brooks chose to tell the story sort of braided across three time periods.

- Mm-hmm.

- So interesting.

- Really, really interesting.

So we start in Kentucky in 1850, and you have a young boy who's enslaved, Jarret, who is a horse groom, and he develops this unique relationship with a foal who becomes the horse.

Well, we know him at first as Darley, and then Lexington.

Right.

And he is just, he moves from place to place, and we really get to understand him as a character.

We also get to know we are in pre-Civil war, but we're right at the cusp.

We're learning about painting of race horses.

That period actually ends in 1875 in New York.

Then you have New York, you have 1954, Martha Jackson.

She is this edgy, contemporary gallery owner, and she just becomes enthralled with a painting of a horse.

And then bring it to 2019, and you have Jess, from the Smithsonian.

She is a scientist.

You have Theo, an art historian, who is Nigerian American, and you have their very complex relationship.

- Messy, messy.

(group laughing) - Let's talk about Jess, because- - Yeah.

- It's messy.

- It's so interesting.

Like, they're both outsiders because they're both from outside of America, but they're both like just... She means well, she means so well.

But she just fails to really understand Theo's own isolation and his work, and you see through their relationships the way that things, like how interracial relationships have evolved and they exist, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're always connecting with each other.

And I thought that was just really fascinatingly done.

And I also felt like Theo's work was so interesting because what he does is he restores the context of Black images and classical texts, and that's something that we're still seeing being done today.

- Yes.

- Just recently the Met restored a painting that erased a little Black boy from it.

- Wow.

- And it's like, it's so relevant, and everything in this book just feels so topical, even though you know it's dealing with just a near past.

- It's such an amazing book.

I can't wait to talk to Geraldine.

- Well, you don't know what you don't know, and not only the characters in the book, but as a reader you get that sinking feeling all the way through.

Plenty to discuss coming up with Geraldine Brooks.

Looking forward to that.

But right now we wanna invite you to join the PBS Books Readers Club too.

- That's right.

You'll enjoy all kinds of insider information and insights into your favorite books and authors when you subscribe to our e-newsletter by visiting PBSBooks.org/subscribe.

And follow PBS Books on all the socials.

- We also want you to join the conversation in our special PBS Books Readers Club Facebook group.

You can chat with other book lovers about book recommendations, insights, and even submit questions for our authors in advance.

- [Lauren] And of course, you should subscribe to the PBS Books YouTube channel so you never miss an episode.

And this very special offer for PBS supporters to keep up with your reading this year.

An ebook of "Horse" or any of our PBS Books features for your phone, tablet, or e-reader, along with the PBS Books stickers, which are very fun.

- [Fred] Check out our PBS Books stickers for your phone, your laptop, water bottle, back window of your car.

I want to see these things- - [Lauren] Everywhere.

- [Fred] Everywhere.

Just click the link in the description or visit PBSBooks.org/donate to get yours now.

The donations support your local PBS station and you'll also enjoy access to PBS Passport, the members only section on the PBS app, where you can stream full seasons of your favorite PBS shows.

- Now our first interview today is with Jamie Crichton, the new head writer of the hit PBS series "All Creatures Great and Small."

And if you loved exploring the bond between animals and their humans in "Horse," you are going to adore this fabulous PBS series.

- Based on the beloved book series, the show follows James Herriot's adventures as a veterinarian in the 1930s Yorkshire Dales, which is beautiful on screen.

Actor Nicholas Ralph portrays the iconic vet who became renowned for his inspiring, I would say dry sense of humor, his compassion for animals, and love of life.

- This show, it has so much heart, which I think is what I love the most.

- Yeah.

- The setting is obviously just gorgeous, and the entire cast is absolutely charming.

It's one of those rare shows that's both dramatic and entertaining, but also, it's just, it's a warm hug.

It's so cozy.

- So wonderful.

Season four released January 7th, and you can catch up on all the episodes on PBS Passport.

- I love this show.

For me, it is about being able to watch it with my full family, from my 7-year-old, to my parents, who are in their seventies, and teenagers, and everyone in between.

It brings us together and is something we can laugh about, come together about, cry at moments about.

- I mean- - Yeah, it's everything for me.

- Absolutely, and it's based on this series of beloved books by James Herriot, and I love them because they're just an elegant time capsule of this period, and you can just read it with a cup of hot cocoa and just feel totally transported.

It's excellent.

- It's amazing.

- We'll, let us now welcome in our guest expert shall we?

- Mm-hmm.

- "All Creatures Great and Small" executive producer and head writer Jamie Crichton joins us now.

Jamie, welcome to the PBS Books Readers Club.

- Thank you very much.

Nice to see you guys.

- We are delighted to have you here.

What an amazing undertaking it must have been to write the fourth season of a show that's been such a big hit.

- I was very pleased to hear it's been a big hit, and in many ways it's even more popular over there in the States than it is here.

So that's, it's lovely to hear.

- In terms of process and inspiration, do James Herriot's original novels remain a touchstone for the series?

- They do.

I mean, to answer that as a personal question first, they've always been.

I grew up with them.

I mean, I don't know how well known they are in the States, but almost everyone here in the UK has at least heard of those original James Herriot books, and most people over 30 or 40 have read them or had them read to them at some stage in their lives.

So, you know, culturally, they're a kind of huge series of books.

But I mean, in terms of season four that we're now in, and how much the extent to which they still form a big part of the series, yeah, I mean there are only so many animal stories in the books to get through, but there's still so much that we haven't touched.

You know, it tends to be, we'll go through, and we'll find great animal stories that stand alone, but we'll also find great animal stories that are sort of looking for a home that need a story to attach to.

And sometimes, you know, we're always trying to marry, trying to tell our human stories through the animal story.

So we're always trying to find the perfect marriage of, ah, this'll be a great story for, you know... there's this, let's use Oscar the cat, or you know, whoever it might be.

We're always trying to find ways of using those stories from the books.

And some of them are made up completely with the help of our vet advisors, veterinary advisors.

You tend to use vet as as military terms, don't you?

(group laughing) But veterinary advisors.

So yeah, it's a mixture of a mixture of both.

- I'm always saying that The Drovers Arms is a place I would love to hang out in, and narratively such a wonderful place, stirring in a lot of conflict and a lot of twists and trouble.

How fun is it to create these narrative tales, as I say, soaked in ale?

(group laughing) - Yeah, I mean, we're always trying to get scenes in The Drovers.

In fact, this season, we got the green light to expand our set of The Drovers.

So there is more drovers than you've ever seen before.

- Right.

- Oh good.

Yeah, that's great news.

We love it here.

I don't know, you're probably used to beautiful scenery over there in England, but we love it here.

- Yeah.

So cool.

So I guess one of the things that jumps out at me is this conflict built into the books, but also in the television series, the idea of tradition versus progress, between science and these folks that are salt of the earth, there in the Yorkshire Dales.

Always a place for built in tension and allegory.

- Yeah, I think so.

I mean, it's a series about the simple things in life, and it's a series about, you know, simple human stories.

Even though we're set against World War II now, obviously, in this season, it's never about the the big dramatic events.

It's always, the DNA of the show is about gentle tension.

It's small moments in people's lives which matter a great deal to them, even if they don't to the wider world.

So it's about sort of how to tell the bigger stories through these much smaller characters and smaller stories, and making us care about the smaller stories through that.

Yeah.

- I love that so much.

And of course the storylines always center around a love and respect for animals.

You said it earlier, I think that's my new favorite phrase, is great animal story.

How do you go about bringing those tender relationships to life in the show?

- I mean, it's all in the characters really, isn't it?

And we'll always find when we're writing episodes or when we're sort of creating a series that it doesn't matter if you've got a great animal story unless it speaks to whatever human story you are telling that particular episode.

It just doesn't work.

So there's got to be a symbiosis between the two.

And so, you know, we work very hard to find the matches, find the stories, or make them, mold them into a shape that makes sure that the human stories that we're telling, whether it be about Siegfried or James or Helen, or whoever it might be, is spoken to by the animal story we're telling as well.

Even if it's a thematic resonance, there has to be that resonance.

- Absolutely.

And you mentioned vets earlier, and my question has always been, what is the experience like working with animals on the set?

Especially 'cause you have all these emotional moments with the animals, and I figure that itself invites chaos into the writing process anyway.

(group laughing) So what is that like, writing around them?

- Yeah, I mean, in episode two there are goats jumping around, charging around.

(group laughing) It's always amazing to see, well, how well behaved they are, but also, there's a cat in episodes five, six and seven, Oscar the Cat, who's in the books as well, and I know that the cast felt a certain, they always feel a certain trepidation whenever they see a cat in the script, because they're like, "Oh no.

There's no way we're gonna get anything done because you cannot train a cat.

You know, we're gonna spend all our time just waiting around for this cat to sit up, or lie down, or leave."

(group laughing) And this cat was incredible.

I mean, it was just a one take wonder, this cat.

(group laughing) - The Daniel Day-Lewis cat.

(group laughing) - That's right.

- That's true.

- And it was the single most beautiful cat I've ever seen.

I did actually want to steal it and take it home with me, but as much as I begged to, it wasn't washing with anyone.

They were not letting me have the cat.

- [Lauren] It's a very valuable cat.

- Well, I mean, at least with animals, you always know where you stand.

More complicated, I guess, is these characters, these human characters in those stories.

- Very, very true.

And I feel that found family comes across so much in this, and you talk about the simplicity, yet found family isn't always so simplistic.

Can you discuss some of the interpersonal relationships that you will explore this season?

- Sure.

I mean, this season is, yeah, it's slightly different without Tristan, and that makes a big difference to the dynamic.

I mean, from a writer's perspective, we all miss writing Tristan, because he's such fun to write.

His kind of impish sense of humor is always, you know, always fun to write.

But actually, there's a strange paradox that it brings out, simply by virtue of the fact often of having fewer characters to write in Skeldale, so there might be, you know... it's amazing that just having that extra space gives your characters just a bit more space to breathe and a bit more opportunity.

And it changes the dynamic as well.

I mean, Tristan not being there, in some ways it makes James feel like he's reverted to the person he was at the beginning of season one, episode one, when he was trying to impress Siegfried and there was no buffer between himself and Siegfried, and so I think in many ways, because that buffer's been removed, there are times in this season where James feels like, "Hang on, have I gone back to being Tristan again?"

(group laughing) - Exactly.

- So true.

- And there's also obviously, that changes Siegfried's dynamic.

You know, a lot of his sort of grumpy cantankerousness, especially at the start of this series, may be attributable to the war, or to giving up smoking for Lent, (group laughing) but we all know, it's him missing Tristan, which is something that over the course of the season, he's sort of got to be forced to admit.

- For me, one of the most compelling characters is Siegfried, and I like to watch along as he learns.

And he is not a full generation older than his brother Tristan, and certainly James, so to me, you can't always predict this parental response.

You sort of don't know which way he's gonna go, and that can result in some wonderful surprises.

- Yeah, he's very unpredictable, which is what makes him him fun.

And I think, you know, certainly less emotionally intelligent than, well... - A little EQ struggles, right?

(group laughing) - The two women especially, I mean, I think Helen and Mrs. Hall are the smartest people in the show, in my mind, you know, and it just so happens that they're both living in an age where, you know, the patriarchy, Siegfried is the man of the house.

But, you know, it's always fun to write because we know as writers, or certainly from my point of view, that yeah, Mrs. Hall is far smarter, certainly emotionally, than Siegfried will ever be.

- Speaking of that relationship, can anyone describe the love that they have for each other, Mrs. Hall and Siegfried?

Because it's not really romantic, it's not quite motherly, she's not old enough to be his mother, but there's something going on there.

How do we rate the chemistry there?

- Well, one of my favorite things is learning about how the audience read that relationship.

But yeah, I mean, it's a good question.

I don't want to give you an answer because I feel like it's a relationship that is open to interpretation and everyone should interpret it as they wish.

But yeah, it's about the little subtle moments, isn't it, that relationship?

There's a sort of "Remains of the Day" element to it.

- It's fulfilling and respectful, which is why we want it to be every kind of relationship, I think.

- Yes.

- But I think it's so interesting to consider the difference in developing characters and relationships for a novel versus the screen, so what was your process in pulling those elements that exist in the Herriot books into your storytelling for the series?

- Well, I mean, actually, truth be told, the books are so great, they're so funny, and they're so effortless in how they bring humanity into the everyday life of the Yorkshire Dales of 1930s and '40s, in truth, aside from sort of several major points like the war breaking out, like Tristan going off to fight, it doesn't drive narrative so much as it provides these gorgeous, characterful moments which will feed into a story.

And we're not always completely faithful.

I mean, the dog in episode one, Duke, is not such a happy ending in the book, shall we say.

It's pretty bleak.

It's a really sad story in the book.

But we changed.

I just said there's no... we can't have the dog die.

That's the bleakest end of a series opener ever.

It's just not what we wanna see.

So, you know, we do occasionally move away from the books.

- I'm glad you made that choice.

- Yeah.

- For the dog's sake.

- Your season addresses challenges, and you've already alluded to them talking about many men leaving their family to go to war.

Could you talk a little bit about, in this season, what do we see in terms of how the men who are in and around the town interact, even with animals, with community members and kind of that balance?

- Yeah, I mean, the Second World War was interesting with regard to the men of each community, because what you've got is a community where some people have gone off to fight, others are left behind.

Some, I mean, I think the interesting thing about James is his sense, a very, very powerful sense of duty, is in such conflict with where he is in his personal journey.

You know, having just married Helen in season three, and the war coming along at the worst possible time, you, in the nicest possible way, as a writer, you kind of want to torture your characters as much as possible, to make it interesting.

(group laughing) So what happens when those two desires, that sense of loyalty, and that desire to start a family come into kind of direct conflict with one another.

So yes, it leads them into, I hope, very rich dramatic territory towards the end of the season.

- Well there are big changes and new characters coming to The Drovers.

Let's take a quick look at what's happening on season four of "All Creatures Great and Small."

(gentle music) (phone ringing) - Darrowby 2297?

- If it wasn't for the ration books and the victory gardens, you'd have no idea there's a war on.

(children yelling) - Oh, James, look at the little faces.

It could all be over soon.

- [James] And it could go on for years.

Siegfried!

(goat bells ringing) - James.

What are you?

- Ladies.

Out of there.

(goat bleating) - Mr. Farnon?

- Miss, erm... - Harbottle.

- Yes, of course.

I'm so sorry.

- [James] What will she do?

- Save us from this paperwork apocalypse.

Rescue us from our administrative quagmire.

- Is it really that bad?

- [Mrs. Hall] You could use an extra pair of hands.

- [James] And Miss Harbottle's not a vet.

And that's what we're missing.

- Where is the boy anyway?

Is he late?

- Mr. Carmody's rather behold to the train from London.

- Richard Carmody, from London?

He won't last.

- Do you always treat your animals like people?

(dog growling) - Yes, Tricky, I quite agree.

He's not like Uncle Herriot.

- He's, um, still learning.

(sheep bleating) - How are we supposed to just... - Carry on without them?

Haven't a damn clue.

Take comfort in those we do have, I suppose.

There's also whiskey.

(pair laughing) - [James] How do I tell her that she'll be all right?

And I have no idea if it will be?

- They rely on us to be resilient, don't they?

But it isn't always easy.

- [Helen] If this war's taught us anything it's to cherish every moment.

(gentle music) - A lot of good stuff there.

Can't wait to see how that all plays out, and I think we've all become very invested in all of these characters.

Can you give us a little behind the scenes insight on the cast?

What are they like to work with?

Do they contribute to the writing process?

Are they at all like their characters?

- They are.

Genuinely, I'm aware that that everyone would say this, but they are genuinely the nicest and most insightful cast I've ever worked with, in terms of knowing just the right amount of questions to feed into the script.

(group laughing) And really, genuinely, it's so helpful when you are working with cast like we've got who really know their character inside out, because, you know, for as long as I've been immersed in this show, and that's, you know, coming up for two years now, I can't pretend to, I can't possibly know, I dunno, Mrs. Hall as well as Anna knows Mrs. Hall, for having lived her for five years.

So there's, she, and all of them, are such great sounding boards for working through ideas.

It's been really, really helpful in terms of getting the best out of the stories, which is what you want at the end of the day, isn't it?

- Well, in terms of character development and thinking through animal people, I'm really interested, are you an animal person?

Do you have any pets?

And are there any people who are in the cast who have pets or unique pets that you wouldn't expect?

- Well, I would have a cat if I'd managed to steal Oscar.

So... (group laughing) Fallen by the wayside.

I've always grown up with family dogs, and cats, actually, we had.

So yeah, I love animals.

Living in an apartment in London makes it slightly trickier.

It's probably like living in an apartment in New York.

- Yeah.

(group laughing) I know what that's like.

- I'm relatable.

- There are so few comfort shows which are about warmth and humanity and just fundamentally good people.

There is barely a bad per... You know, there is not a villain in the entire landscape of "All Creatures," I don't think, even the people who occasionally do or say bad things are good hearted people, and I think what it also understands as a show is that there are so many people who watch these shows, and this show in particular, for whom their relationship with their animal, whether it be a dog, a cat, any kind of pet, is so important to them, so important, that it's every bit as meaningful as a family member or, you know, or a loved one.

It's a show which really, really brings comfort to that demographic, to people who... And my goodness, we have so, so many stories of people watching it with their cats on their lap, or the... (group chatting indistinctly) So I think it's really lovely to have that, that individuality, that thing that sets it apart is the, you know, the animals, and how they play a part.

And we've got such interesting animals in this series as well.

I mean, obviously, the staple of a Yorkshire vet show are the farm animals, but you know, there's are goats, as I said, there's a ferret, there's a boxer dog.

We've got a tortoise, Bernard the tortoise.

(group laughing) - Oh boy, yeah.

- We've got a falcon.

You know, there's an array of animals in this season, which is, yeah, we're really trying to play the full animal bingo card.

- Hopefully there's a sheep or two, they're my personal favorite.

- Yeah.

There are.

There's a beautiful lamb.

Well, you've probably seen it in episode one.

- Well it is a show that comforts us, touches us in so many ways, and that's why we love it.

Jamie Crichton, thanks for joining us on the PBS Books Readers Club.

We will look forward to "All Creatures Great and Small," all seasons now available on PBS Passport.

Thanks so much, Jamie.

We're grateful for the time.

- Thank you, Jamie.

- You very welcome.

- Thank you so much.

- Take care.

- Well, some terrific insight into one of our favorite PBS shows.

Exactly, as someone said earlier, what we need right now.

- Oh, great animal stories.

I love that.

- All I can think about now is little chickens like on their mark, and just like- - Professional acting cats.

- Just like Meryl.

I'm just gonna name them all.

Like Meryl Streep Chicken, Daniel Day-Lewis Chicken, Oscar the Oscar winning cat.

So, yeah.

- I love that so much.

And now we come to our featured author of the month, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "Horse," Geraldine Brooks.

- And after that we are going to reveal the PBS Books Readers Club selection for next month, so stick around for that.

But now, let us welcome in Geraldine Brooks to the PBS Books Readers Club.

- Well, good day.

It's wonderful to be with you.

- We're so glad to have you here with us, and this book, we all loved reading it.

It was the perfect selection for our first pick of the month and it just felt so big, almost cinematic.

I could sort of see it playing out before my eyes.

Where did this all begin for you and where did the idea come from?

- Well, I have to say it began for me with the rather rash decision to take up horse riding in my fifties.

(group laughing) - Wow.

- Having never been horse riding.

But I was at, actually, it was a conference for writers in Santa Fe and it was on a ranch and one of the wranglers persuaded me that they were great horses and nothing terrible would happen to me if I went on a trail ride, and I believed him, and I had an ecstatic experience doing it, and a few days later when I was back home at my place on Martha's Vineyard, a young friend came over and I told her how much I'd loved it, and she looked out the window and she said, "You've got a couple of acres, you could have a horse."

- [Lauren] Wow.

- "In fact, I can give you my horse."

- That's amazing.

- There you go.

- Free horse, you know.

Well, actually, there's no such thing as a free horse, and it was a very (group laughter drowns out speaker).

(group laughing) - So true.

- Upkeep.

And many, many times during the course of learning about how to care for a horse and how to stay on a horse, I often thought that knitting would've been a more sensible choice.

(group laughing) In any case, I was obsessed with this horse, and I wasn't getting any actual fiction writing done, because all I wanted to do was read horse books and ride my horse, and then I was lucky enough to go to a lunch at Plimoth Patuxet Museum, and at the same lunch, way down the table, a gentleman from the Smithsonian was telling his lunch mates how he had just delivered the skeleton of the greatest racehorse in the American 19th century.

- [Lauren] Wow.

- From a forgotten place in the attic at the Natural History Museum in Washington, to pride of place in the International Museum of the Horse in Kentucky.

Because this horse was the reason that Kentucky became the center of thoroughbred breeding in America.

And my salad was uneaten, and my lunch.

(group laughing) But (distorted speaking) my attention because I knew right away that this was going to be my next novel.

- That's amazing.

What an amazing story.

- Right?

- Wow.

- That's incredible.

- Life is stranger than fiction.

(group laughing) - Well your book, it truly champions the relationship between a horse and a human.

It's extraordinary to read about Jarret's connection with Darley, who is then renamed Lexington.

Can you speak about this relationship and how much is based on fact versus fiction?

- So we know that Lexington had a Black groom called Jarret.

There are mentions in certain farm records, there's the mention on, you know... unfortunately you're talking about the Antebellum period and Jarret was enslaved, but what it was like to be him.

Unfortunately there's no record, so that's where imagination comes in.

And so I tried to inform that imagination, resting very heavily on the work of Black historians and other historians who have started to unearth the enormous contribution of highly skilled Black horsemen to racing in the 19th and early 20th centuries, until Jim Crow laws forced them out of the business for decades.

So Jarret existed.

I tried to create him in the light of the history and also in the light of my own experience with horses.

So everything that Jarret experiences with Lexington, all the feelings and all the observations that he makes, are really about me and my mare.

The relationship between a horse and a human is very special.

It takes a lot... you know, I've always loved animals, I've always had dogs in my life.

I have a wonderful dog now.

But there's something easier to having a relationship with somebody who's like us, who's a predator, who looks out at the world with eyes in front, looking for our next meal.

And then to cross the barrier to have a relationship with a species who exists in the experience of prey, where the eyes are to the side, because horses are always looking for what's coming to make them their next meal.

You know, they live a very precarious existence.

And so when you can cross that barrier and have affection and trust, it's very special, and it takes empathy and it takes patience on both sides.

And I do think that really one of the biggest themes of my book is the relationship between people and animals.

All that we get from them, and what we owe them, and I think that that's a very important thing to remember, that we're not the only ones here on this planet, and we have to take better care of the animals that are with us day to day in close relationships, but also the ones that we don't see, we have to leave some space for them.

- Absolutely.

All those relationships matter.

And I think your book is all about these relationships and bonds.

You told a really big expansive story in "Horse" and over so many different time periods and different sets of characters.

What made you decide to tell this story in that kind of way?

- The story itself told me how it needed to be told.

I didn't expect it to have as many strands.

I thought it was gonna be really, as you always do when you set out on a new novel, it's very clear it's gonna be so much simpler than the last one.

So I thought it was gonna be the straightforward, interesting story of this amazing racehorse and what happened to him during the civil war and after, and how he made the transition from being the fastest horse and a national obsession on the track to being the greatest stud stallion in American history.

Right.

So that's the spine of the novel.

But immediately I started to research it, I realized it couldn't just be a story about racing, it would also have to be a story about race in America, because of the signal contribution of these skilled Black horseman, on whose plundered labor and skills this racing industry had been built.

And then, you know, I was interested in the science around the Smithsonian.

How had this horse's skeleton got there?

Why was it neglected in the attic?

So I thought that there would be a contemporary thread to frame the story.

And because I was going to be talking about race in the 19th century, I couldn't leave that thread behind there as if it's something over and done with that we don't have to concern ourselves with anymore.

I knew that that would have to reverberate in the contemporary story as well.

And then much to my astonishment, as I learned of all the wonderful paintings that had been made of Lexington, and of the people who worked with him in the 19th century, it led me to the art piece of the story, and that most unexpectedly led me to New York in the immediate post World War II period when artists were changing our aesthetics, and the rise of Jackson Pollock and de Kooning, and Bridget Riley, and all these marvelous artists who were doing art in a new way.

And who would've thought a 19th century race horse was gonna lead me straight to Jackson Pollock's (group laughter drowns out speaker)?

- That was a surprise for everybody.

It was so interesting.

(group laughing) - Alright, Geraldine, I wanna talk about process.

What was it like for you to write three separate but related storylines?

Do you write them all separately or do you go in linear order?

Like, how do you outline something like that?

- So I'm a pretty instinctive writer.

I don't outline a lot, you know, because I came to writing fiction from journalism, so I never had any formal MFA classes or anything of that nature where you learn the toolbox that writers use.

I just took the journalist's toolbox and then allowed something that journalists aren't allowed to do, which is when you run outta fact as a journalist, you have to stop.

You can only print what you can prove.

Or at least that's how it used to be.

(group laughing) - Allegedly.

(group laughing) - No, it certainly was during my long career starting in Australian newspapers and then with the Wall Street Journal for 10 years as a foreign correspondent.

But the beauty of being a novelist is you follow the line of fact as far as it leads, and you pull on that thread and you pull on that thread, and then when that thread frays and breaks, and there's no more fact to be found, you get to make it up.

(group laughing) And so that's my (distorted speaking).

My process is to deeply, deeply research, to read as much as I can in the voices of the period until I can hear those voices in my head, and then when I can't dig up the fact after, you know, the most diligent effort I can make, only then I let myself start to imagine what it might have been like.

- [Lauren] Mm-hmm.

That's so beautiful.

- "Horse" tackles some pretty heavy themes, including racism in the past and present.

Can you talk about why you felt like this story was so important to tell?

- Because the people who surrounded the horse, Darley, then Lexington, most of them who were responsible for his early success were Black and enslaved, so there's really no moral way to leave them out of the story.

And I have to say, you know, I was writing this at a time when the argument about appropriation had become very loud and I had some trepidation as a white woman writing the lives of Black men.

And yet, so, you know, the cowardly way to do it would've been to focus on the white owners, but that would've been to erase the enormous contribution of the Black horsemen once again, and I couldn't do that.

So I just had to do the best job I can.

And luckily, you know, with the contemporary thread as well, I had Black friends who were extremely patient and generous with me in laying out aspects of their lived experience, and in the United States, I live on Martha's Vineyard, which has had a thriving Black community.

(birds calling) You are hearing our wonderful Australian cockatoos in the background.

- I love it.

(group chatting indistinctly).

Big and small.

(group laughing) - It's a big, big animal episode.

- Well that's for sure.

You know, it's also really interesting how the themes of racism are brought forward through the characters.

- Yeah.

So many different characters, like you have Mary Barr.

And I would love to discuss, like you, I found all your insights really wonderful.

Like, I really appreciate that as a Black reader I could tell that there was a lot of care taken in it.

And also the white characters that we do have all give insights into the contradictions of whiteness at the time.

So you have like Mary Barr, you have Jess.

So I was wondering how are you sculpting the white characters as you are also creating their narrative in this story?

- So, you know, I had so many characters that I had to deeply research, so I decided to give myself one character that I didn't have to research, and she's very much based on me, and that's Jess.

And like Jess, I came to the United States for graduate school, not expecting to stay very long, but I was offered a wonderful job, and so way led onto way, and I've had a very American life over the past few decades.

But when I arrived as a graduate student, never having lived outside of Australia before, I was very naive and very... you know, I blended in social situations and I didn't understand a lot of what I was seeing.

I had a steep learning curve.

So I gave all that to Jess.

With, you know, some of the white characters in the past, that's comes from their own letters and the way they reveal themselves and the way they looked at Black people.

The interesting thing is that the horsemen, unlike any other enslaved person that you read about...

In a lot of the enslaver's letters and journals, there's tremendous condescension and contempt for enslaved people.

It just, it bleeds off the page.

It's excruciating.

It was different with the Black horsemen, because these men were so important to the white thoroughbred owners.

What they did was a source of wealth and prestige like nothing else, and so when they talk about the Black horseman, there's respect there, and it was a stunning contrast with most of what you read.

So that was fascinating to me, and I wanted to try and convey some of that, along with the fact that these people still had absolutely no agency over their life and could be used as any other fancy tool might be used in the pursuit of wealth.

- Absolutely.

- Well it's interesting the way that you talk about Jess as being sort of like your former self, because I think you wrote her in a really honest way, because in some ways she's this very progressive woman who's trying to make her way in a male dominated field, but she also has some very awkward blunders that are on display.

So, you know, we were like, "What, how does Geraldine feel about Jess?"

It turns out it's this very honest portrayal of what it was like for you.

So it's really interesting to learn.

- And, you know, good intentions aren't enough.

You have to listen and you have to learn.

- Were there parts of that immigrant experience that you also put into Theo?

Because I thought it was interesting that you have this discussion of contemporary race through two lenses of people who are navigating it with intensity, but also a level of difference.

So how did Theo's Nigerian American identity form in your mind when you were crafting him?

- So something, you know, that someone I'm very lucky to call a friend, Professor Henry Louis Gates, who has a wonderful course at Harvard on Black studies, and the first thing he says to his students is, there are 20 million ways to be Black in America.

And so I just wanted to complicate the issue a bit by making Theo somebody who has only lived in America for a short time.

He is the son of diplomats, a Black American father and a Nigerian mother, and he's lived abroad, as a diplomat brat does, and gone to English boarding school, and he comes to the United States as a graduate student, as Jess did, and there are things he doesn't get.

You know, he doesn't get, it's not bred in the bone, and so that puts him in a different place and it puts him at risk.

I wanted them to be slightly outsiders, as, because you can allow an outsider to notice things.

It's kind of a bit of a professional trick of the novelist.

The person who lives in Japan doesn't notice the tatami mats and the ginkgo trees, but the stranger who arrives does.

So you can't, you know, you can't have a character noticing something that they would see every day.

- Well that makes total sense.

So one of the things we all love as readers and PBS viewers is we get to learn about so many different things.

In "Horse" we take a deep dive into many different subjects from horse racing, to forensics, to art.

- Yeah, and the art is such an interesting part of it.

I know you mentioned that you found out about the painting, and I'm just wondering where in your research about the painting did you realize that it was a key part of telling "Horse's" narrative?

Because I'm sure it's like, it's a fun fact, but how did you know it was key to telling this story?

- Well, because there's such a great mystery at the heart of it, and how it came up was I was at the Smithsonian researching the science around osteo prep, and what they do with bones in order to get them ready for scientists to study, and all the wealth of information that scientists can learn from bones, which was amazing, and I enjoyed that so much.

And while I was there, a curator from the National Gallery said, "You know we have a portrait of the horse that you're interested in.

Would you like to see it?"

And I said, "Of course."

And it wasn't on public display.

It was in the study center, so I get to go behind the scenes a little bit, which I always love to do.

And there is this charming, completely traditional 19th century oil portrait of Lexington.

Wonderful.

And I asked the curator if it had come to the gallery with the skeleton, as part of that bequest.

And she said, "No, much later."

And she said, "Wow, this is really interesting."

It was part of a bequest from a famous gallery owner called Martha Jackson, who was a feminist pioneer in the avant garde art world.

One of Pollock and de Kooning's earliest supporters, who gave Bridget Riley her first New York exhibition.

And everything else that she bequeathed to the Smithsonian was edgy contemporary art from that period, except for this one traditional oil painting of a racehorse done by an itinerant artist called Thomas Scott.

And I became so fascinated about why a woman like Martha Jackson, who dedicated her life to contemporary art, why did she have this painting?

- Right?

- And I wanted to (distorted speaking) art.

So that led me down that rabbit hole, and it was a fascinating rabbit hole.

And also because the paintings are wonderful documents in themselves because they often include the Black horsemen, and the way the Black horsemen are portrayed, again, is very different.

There's no caricature in these portraits of the Black horsemen, they're presented as eminent individuals, as skilled in their profession, and so that intrigued me as well.

- So speaking of Martha Jackson, it was really interesting to me that you explored or went down the rabbit hole, per se, of the Jackson, Pollock relationship.

I personally have always loved Lee Krasner, and I feel like she's been overlooked, and I was really excited to see that she was represented in your book.

Could you speak a little bit about, had you always known about Lee Krasner, and just why you decided to include her?

- I had known about her and I'd admired her work, and I'd always been very aware that women artists in the past have not had... and even today, have not had the kind of entitlement and agency given to the male artist.

There's a very famous book by an Australian author, Drusilla Modjeska, called "Stravinsky's Lunch," which talks about this subject in detail.

Stravinsky would, the composer, notoriously demanded his wife and children maintain complete silence at the lunch table so that their chatter would not interfere with the music in his head.

And I'm like, why didn't you get your own lunch?

(group laughing) - Go outside.

Touch grass.

- (distorted speaking) And I think Pollock and Krasner is an unfortunate example of this.

She really subsumed a lot of her creative energy into keeping that incredibly difficult man on track.

And yes, he was a genius, but she was a genius too, and, you know, her work got far less attention.

She got far less time and space to do it.

And I think that that is a story that repeats itself over and over again in art history.

- Well, you really had to become an expert on so many things.

Everything from art history to horse racing, US history, modern science, museums and how they work.

I think I would've felt quite overwhelmed by the amount of research that that would've taken.

What, how did you even get started?

- Well, it's just fun really, and, you know, I think it's the old newspaper reporter in me.

I just love to get up in other people's business.

(group laughing) If they do something unusual.

So going to the Osteo Prep Lab at the Smithsonian Museum Support Center out in Maryland, it was just a mind blowing experience, because only 2% of the Smithsonian collections are on exhibition in the great museums on the mall.

98% of what the Smithsonian has is held in storage pods and scientific laboratories and study centers out in Maryland, and I didn't know that.

And being able to go there, it's an incredible place.

Every kind of research you can think of is happening.

All kinds of amazing treasures of human creativity are stored there.

Examples, tissue samples, DNA of every creature known to exist on the planet is there.

And my business was with the funky corner of it called the bug room, or the Osteo Prep Lab.

- Sure.

(group laughing) - The bug room.

Because even though they have every high tech bit of scientific equipment you could think of, the best way to clean bones is still to let bugs at them.

- I remember that in the book.

That's so interesting.

- And so there's this thing like a giant walk-in refrigerator, except it's warm and humid inside because that's what the beetles who do the job like.

- That smells great, I'm sure.

(laughing) - And I watched the lab manager put down a carcass, and the only thing I can liken it to is buffet night at my son's high school football team.

(group laughing) Whoosh.

And the bones get cleaned without destroying any information that they might contain.

Like, if you did it chemically or mechanically, you'd risk destroying information, but the bugs don't do that.

So I just find that kind of access really wonderful.

Well, you know, the history itself tells you, if you study history, and that's why I get so concerned about the wars against studying history that are going on in American schools now.

The more you study it, the more complicated it is, and the less one dimensional things become.

You know, you have somebody like Bingaman who's a minor character in the book, who owned the enormous property in Natchez, where Lexington was sent to train.

And Bingaman had a Black family in New Orleans, and when he died, he left his property to his Black children.

You know, so you have this guy who's like the archetypal evil white enslaver, and yet he had a loving relationship with a Black family.

So, you know, it complicates you.

It makes you... And, and then you have a character like Cassius Clay, who most of us know the name Cassius Clay because it was Muhammad Ali's given name, but Cassius Clay was actually an emancipationist, a white Kentucky landowner from the family that was the largest enslavers in Kentucky, the Clay family.

And Cassius emancipated all the slaves that he inherited and then went on to campaign for emancipation, and he had a newspaper called the "True American."

And needless to say, white Kentuckians weren't too crazy about that, and he survived three assassination attempts.

So, you know, the history is rich, and I, you know, I love what Eleanor Roosevelt said, "Learn your history.

It will make you love your country more."

- Yeah.

Absolutely.

You talked about doing a lot of research from Black historians, and I know there are some listed in the afterword, but what were some tiles in particular that stuck out to you or you found really informative during the research process?

- So there's new scholarship happening all the time on the Black horsemen themselves, which was invaluable, and that's mainly coming out piecemeal in journals now, but there are wonderful researchers on aspects of the, just ordinary domestic life of enslaved people, and I'm thinking in particular of Tera Hunter's wonderful book, "Bound in Wedlock," which looks at the nature of enslaved marriage, and how do you form bonds of love and family in a situation of such precarity.

And she digs deeply into her own family's experience.

As a historian, she's got the toolbox to be able to remarkably unearth facts from her own family's life, but also into other records that she found.

It's a marvelous book.

And then Jessica Dallow was invaluable on the art history and the portrayal, particularly of the Black horsemen in Antebellum art, and how singular their portrayals were, and how different from other depictions of enslaved people that we have.

- Well, I'm fascinated by quantum physics, the idea that all time is constant, and to that end, you started it with a forward from Patrick Phillips.

"It will be the past and we will live there together."

Tell us why.

- That is a lovely poem called "Heaven" by Patrick Phillips, and that's how he envisions heaven, and this book, you know, in the middle of writing it, my beloved husband, Tony Horwitz, was on a book tour himself for a book called "Spying on the South," and we had done a lot of research together, because there were overlapping threads in the time periods that we were researching.

And he was in Washington DC, and he died suddenly.

(group murmuring) And this was such a shocking blow, because we'd been married for 35 years and together since graduate school, and we'd worked together as correspondents in war zones, and then we'd settled to raise two sons and both become book writers.

But he was a real historian.

He said I'd gone over to the dark side making things up.

(group laughing) He stuck to the line of fact, but he wrote in such a vivid and engaging way, about how the past informs the present, and probably his best known book is "Confederates in the Attic," which looked at the unfinished issues of the Civil War that still reverberate in our contemporary society.

So we had a really symbiotic relationship, and honestly, I didn't know who I was without him, and it took me a year to crawl back to my desk and finish "Horse."

But "Horse" was a subject that he loved because it was in a time period of American history that he loved and knew very well, and he'd helped me a lot with the research, and I felt like I had to finish this book if only so I could dedicate it to him.

And I read the wonderful Phillips poem, and I realized that that would be the perfect dedication.

- That's beautiful.

We are so glad that you did.

And I know our time together is growing short, but we have a couple more questions.

We wanna get to know you a little bit better.

You clearly have, you know, a bit of an animal person.

Besides your beautiful horse, who we're so sorry that you lost, any other animals throughout your lifetime?

Pets, special pets?

- We always had animals when I was growing up, and you know, often they were rescues and mutts and animals with difficult personalities, but I learned- - Loud (cross talk drowns out speaker).

(group laughing) - My father just thought our pets were the best, no matter how, you know, skewwhiff they were.

He just loved them.

Loved them.

And so my mother also, and we love the wild animals as much as we, you know, knew of them growing up in the inner city.

And so it was just always a big part of my life and an enriching part of my life, and I think it's the dogs that have been, you know, my closest companions, real shared love with them, and there've been some great dogs over the years.

I've got a great dog right now.

Her name is Bear, and she is just my boon companion.

But equines came, I came late to those, as I said, but that was a whole different experience of being with an animal.

And then luckily, I just recently had a relationship with a donkey, and I can't say too much about donkeys.

They are just fantastic.

They're very different to horses.

- Mm-hmm.

- They don't react in the same kind of flighty way that horses do.

They think about things and they make a decision.

(group laughing) And you better (distorted speaking) is the one that you.

(group laughing) - Did you always know that you wanted to be a fiction writer and cross into the dark side?

- (laughing) Not at all.

From a very early age, I wanted to be a newspaper reporter, and I worked towards that.

When I went to college, I thought, what do newspaper reporters need to know?

So I did a double major in government and fine arts, thinking, well, there's politics in the paper and there's culture, so I'm gonna cover the waterfront here.

And I did get hired by a great Sydney newspaper to be a trainee reporter, and they sent me to the sports department.

(group laughing) So all my knowledge of the uses of temper and quattrocento, Italian wall painting and bicameral parliaments went for nought for quite some time.

(laughing) But no, I loved every, you know, I love being a journalist.

I love being a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in the Middle East and in several African countries, and in the Balkans during the siege of Sarajevo, and I would've kept doing that, I think, but at the ripe old age of 39, I realized that it was now or ever if I was going to have a family.

And once my first son was born, I realized I didn't want to be going off on long open-ended assignments to dangerous places, so I needed a new gig.

(group laughing) And luckily, 10 years earlier, we'd wandered into a little village in England that had made a unique decision when bubonic plague struck and had decided to quarantine themselves voluntarily rather than flee and spread the infection into surrounding communities, and the story of that village and what had happened there, and imagining what it was like to bring people to such an enormous consensus, and what it was like to live through the consequences of it, became my first novel, "Year of Wonders."

And lucky for me, somebody wanted to read it.

(group laughing) And so I got to work doing that.

Yes.

- Are we allowed to ask you what you're working on now, if anything?

- I just finished a short memoir called "Memorial Days," and it tells the story of what happened when Tony died, and everything that I learned about death and grief and how inadequately modern society allows you to deal with that.

And so it's a short book that I just... you know, I don't know if anyone needs to read it, but I certainly needed to write it, and so that will probably come out early next year.

And I have another historical novel, and that is gonna take me to Oxford where I have a visiting fellowship next fall.

- Very exciting.

- And, yeah, it's another historical novel with a couple of time periods involved in it.

- Well, we can't wait to read both of those.

- I know.

- That's very exciting.

- I love that.

I love anyone who plays with time.

But as a writer, what is your ideal writing setup?

Are you more of a night person, morning owl?

Do you want to be in an office space, or do you mix it up?

- So, because I became a novelist after I had an infant, it was all about childcare.

(group laughing) - I can relate.

Pragmatist.

- Yeah, the first five years I wrote when I could afford a babysitter, and again, one of the wonderful things about having been a newspaper reporter is you do not wait for the muse to arrive or to get your aura on straight, because if you call up your foreign desk and say, "I can't write about Sarajevo today, the muse was not arriving," (group laughing) that doesn't work.

You have to write every day.

And that discipline of writing every day is invaluable.

So on that marvelous day when my kid was spirited away by the school bus and gone for six hours, (group laughing) that became my writing day, and it sort of still is, because I found the structure really suits me very well.

I get straight to it, have a cup of coffee, open the Norton Anthology of Poetry, let it fall open to any page, and read a poem, because that inspires me as to what can be done with language.

I think the poets are the Olympic athletes of the English language.

And then I sit down at my desk and I try, I try to be undistracted until mid-afternoon.

It doesn't always work in these very distracting times that we have, but that's what I am always aiming towards.

- Well, Geraldine, we like to conclude our author talks with a little bit of a lightning round, if you are up for that.

Are you up for it?

- Sure.

- All right.

Here's question one.

Has there ever been a movie better than the book?

- Yes.

I think "Last of the Mohicans" with Daniel Day-Lewis is better than the book.

- [Fred] "I will find you."

(group laughing) - Very good.

Very good.

Okay.

Do you- - Probably the most romantic laugh in cinema.

- Correct.

- Okay.

Book, e-reader, or audio book?

- Absolutely book.

I'll occasionally use an e-reader if I'm traveling and I wanna have a bunch of books and I don't have room in my carryall, but book, book, book.

- [Lauren] Yes.

- Audio books do a wonderful job, and who doesn't love being read to, but for me, you know, I want to be able to read it again and revisit the sentence that I liked, and just, there's something about an actual book in my hand that is unsurpassable to me.

I think it's one of the greatest human inventions.

- Agreed, absolutely.

Coffee, tea or something stronger?

(group laughing) - Ha.

(group laughing) Coffee.

Coffee to start the day.

And perhaps a glass of chardonnay to end it.

- Love it.

- Sounds good.

Perfect.

- Favorite book from your childhood?

- So even before I could read, my parents were wonderful about reading to me and my sister, and my dad picked a book for me by Paul Gallico that was called "Scruffy," and it's a remarkable book.

It's set during World War II, and it's about the great apes on Gibraltar, and the legend is that while there are apes on Gibraltar, the British Empire will not fall.

And of course, it's dark days for Britain, under attack by the Nazis, and unfortunately the apes on Gibraltar are dying, and this could be a big propaganda win for the Nazis, so they have to get this really absolutely disreputable ape to mate with a female ape.

And they employ the secret service to get this done.

And it is funny, and it's adventurous, and I just loved everything about it, and again, it's about the bond between humans and animals, and always a wonderful, wonderful story for me.

- What was your least favorite subject in school?

- Oh, I'm sorry.

It was math.

Because the way they teach math, I think they should start kindergarten teaching you about fractals and how beautiful they are.

- Yes.

- And then work towards, work back towards learning your times tables, and then people would be intrigued by math and the beauty of the cosmos.

- Agreed.

- All right.

Geraldine Brooks, what is the best writing advice you ever received?

- The best writing advice I ever received was from Judith Viorst, a wonderful American writer, and it is, when there's no wind, row.

- Hmm.

I love that.

Favorite books you've read in the last year?

- Oh, it's been such a great year for books.

I absolutely loved a book by a young writer called Lily Brooks-Dalton, called "The Light Pirate."

It's just an exquisitely written, page-turning account of the family in Florida, under pressure from climate change and how things could go so wrong, so quickly, if we don't get a grip on this.

But you just care so much about the characters.

So that one carried me away.

I loved "Tom Lake" by Ann Patchett.

And then two books by fellow Australian writers, a wonderful book called "Question 7," which is part memoir and part and exploration of all the biggest issues of the 20th century.

And then a book called "Graft" by Maggie MacKellar, and it is about life on a Tasmanian sheep farm, and it has a very, very James Herriot sensibility to it, but under the stresses of what's happening with climate change and how you care for your animals at a time of drought, and it's an incredibly moving story of family and farm life.

- Do you set reading goals for yourself?

- Not goals, I just love to read.

I just love to, you know, as soon as I get my hands on a book, I devour it, and then I have to get another one as soon as possible.

(group laughing) - Yeah.

- Can't be without a book.

- This is one of my favorite books of the last year.

So "Horse" by Geraldine Brooks.

What are you reading now?

- What am I reading now?

- Yeah.

- I just finished Sigrid Nunez's wonderful book called "The Vulnerables" and there's a key character in that book who is a macaw.

So she writes beautifully about animals.

I really admired her previous novel, "A Friend," in which the crucial character was a Great Dane.

So that was very much my cup of tea.

And I've just started "Birnam Wood."

- Oh, amazing.

- Nice.

- That's on my list.

What advice would you give to aspiring writers out there?

- You have to treat it like a job.

I don't believe in writer's block, because auto mechanics aren't allowed to have auto mechanics block, and hairdressers don't have hairdressers block.

(group laughing) - You go to work.

- You go to work every day.

And you can't do well every day.

You can't make, you know, make beautiful writing every day, but you can do something, and if you've got something, you've got something to work with, and that was inspired by a friend who's a great sculptor called Sarah Sze, and she was asked about her process, and she said her process is "Mess, mess, mess, art."

(group laughing) - Perfect.

- And I just find that such a liberating thought, because you can't make art every day, but you can absolutely make a mess every day.

So go to work.

- For sure.

And of course, when there's no wind, row.

- I love that.

- Yeah.

- Lots of good, I'm writing down a lot of things that you say.

(group laughing) Finally, Geraldine, is there anything that you'd like to say to your readers?

- Thank you.

You know, I just have immense gratitude that people connect with my book, that people bother to try to connect with my book, and please support your local independent bookstore.

- Well, on that note, we will say great thanks for sharing some time with us, Geraldine Brooks.

Thanks for being with us on the PBS Books Readers Club.

We sure appreciate it.

- Thank you.

It was a pleasure to be with you.

- Wow.

Well, I love her.

That was- - Yes.

- I knew I was gonna be moved, but I think just the insights, the amount of research, the care, you know.

As a Black reader, I do understand like that trepidation, and just knowing that there was so much care and consideration just really moved me.

It meant, it meant a lot, and it really enriched the experience to know that all of that was what was going on in the back of her head.

- [Lauren] Yeah.

It was really incredible for me to hear insights, even thinking about, it just stuck with me, the position of the eyes of a horse, and just those little insights that I hadn't really even considered.

The difference of a predator and a prey and that special relationship that is so heartfelt that comes through the whole book.

And then the art, just getting insights, and how serendipitous- - Yeah.

- All of her experiences were to lead to this amazing book.

It was incredible.

- Well, she was, I mean, just so insightful, and so funny.

How awesome to have Geraldine Brooks in our book club.

That was amazing.

- Yes.

- A perfect time.

- Yeah.

The best way to start a book club.

I love that so much.

And hey, if you haven't read "Horse" yet, I am sure you're going to want to read it now.

You can pick up a copy at your local library or bookstore or download the ebook when you support your local PBS station.

- [Fred] And don't forget to get your official PBS Books sticker.

Our thanks when you donate to your local PBS station.

Just click the link in the description or visit PBSBooks.org/donate, and remember that as a supporter of your local station, you'll also get access to PBS Passport, where you can stream your favorite PBS shows, including "All Creatures Great and Small."

- And now it is time to reveal our PBS Books Readers Club selection for next month.

Princess, will you do the honors?

- Yes.

I'm so excited.

So our next book of the month feature is "The Black Church" by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

I'm so excited.

It's this beautiful look at the relationship between the Black church and Black America.

This is what he is perfect at.

I cannot wait to finally read this.

- [Fred] Well, and Heather, Henry Louis Gates Jr. is such an icon of our time, maybe one of the most important voices that we have today.

- I couldn't agree more.

I mean, he is a scholar, he is this writer.

He is, he's a movie star.

He is just, he's amazing.

- Yeah.

- And he even taught the class that Geraldine Brooks just spoke about, which is pretty incredible, and we are so fortunate that he's going to be in our reading club next month, and also what's really neat is for those people out there who wanna see "Finding Your Roots," it's on PBS right now.

If you wanna see his latest documentary, "Gospel," it is coming out in February.

So for all those people out there, go watch it.

But also, you have "The Black Box" is coming out in March, his latest book, and I'm so excited to get to read that as well.

- Well, we cannot wait to sit down with Henry Louis Gates Jr. for next month's episode.

For now, it's time to get reading.

Be sure to submit your questions for the great Henry Louis Gates by joining the PBS Books Readers Club Facebook group, and they could be asked and answered on next month's episode.

Very exciting.

- We will also have some other book recommendations coming your way in the PBS Books e-newsletter.

So remember to subscribe to that by visiting PBSBooks.org/subscribe.

- Well, and subscribe to the PBS Books YouTube channel as well, so you will never miss an episode.

- We are so glad to have you as a part of our PBS Books Readers Club.

Thanks so much for joining, and happy reading.

(bright music) (bright music continues) (bright music continues)