When Tara Menon describes the underwater world that surrounds an island off the coast of Thailand, her language is both restrained and lush.

“The reef is busy with color,” she writes, “Fiery scorpion fish, yellow frog-fish, red snappers, white-and-orange clown fish, a shoal of electric-blue angelfish, fat black sea cucumbers, powder-blue surgeonfish. Sand suspended between the dimpled surface glitters in the sunlight.”

Her prose, like the story, exemplifies the contrast between the simple joy of true friendship and the aching loss left behind when that gift is stripped away.

Menon’s novel, “Under Water,” unfolds before and after the devastating Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, that surged across the Indian Ocean and killed more than 225,000 people. But the heartbeat of the story is the friendship between two girls who each have to navigate a stinging loss.

Menon joins Kerri Miller for a conversation about writing, the elegance of restraint and how to avoid sentimentality when building a story around childhood friendship and exuberant nature, on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

Guest:

• Tara Menon is an assistant professor of English at Harvard University. Her debut novel is “Under Water.”

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On the day the Sharafs bury their 18-year-old daughter, the girl’s mother is so bereaved, she can barely stand. The father is so anguished, he nearly climbs into the grave himself.

But as Patmeena Sabit’s debut novel unspools, it’s up to the reader to parse the truth about the girl’s death — and who may have been accomplices to it. The narrative is told through a kaleidoscope of viewpoints. Fellow Afghan immigrants, journalists and law enforcement each relate what they saw, through their own lens. But eye witnesses can be wrong. Neighbors have an agenda. One person’s truth is another person’s lie.

For Sabit, that’s the whole point.

“When I was creating the story, I was thinking … about the nature of perception and how reliable that is, and objective truth and if there is an objective truth to any one situation,” she tells Kerri Miller.

“Good People” is both a cultural study of a community’s judgement and an interrogation of what it means to be an American — all with a crime at the center of it. Sabit and Miller talk about it on this week’s Big Books and Bold Ideas.

Guest:

• Patmeena Sabit was born in Kabul and fled to Pakistan and then to the United States with her family after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. “Good People” is her debut novel.

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Abby Jimenez is a powerhouse.

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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After “An American Marriage,” her wildly successful 2018 novel, Tayari Jones signed a contract for her next book to be about a woman grappling with gentrification in modern Atlanta.

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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Kerri Miller hosted a community conversation with presidential historian and author Jeffrey Engel in Red Wing on Wednesday night, April 8. Engel was brought in by the Duff Endowment, as part of their free lecture series, designed to increase civic engagement in the Red Wing area.

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.

This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order that would undo birthright citizenship. That long-established legal principle was enshrined in the 14th Amendment. In part, it says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens."

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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A new book by Minnesota author Louise Erdrich is always reason to celebrate.

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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What does it mean to live richly, even radiantly, while facing the impending darkness of climate change? How do we stand in awe at the planet we see around us even as we doubt that humanity will intervene in time to save much of what we love about it?

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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When it comes to megaliths — massive stones set in place by prehistoric people — Americans are probably most familiar with Stonehenge. But the U.K.’s landscape is punctuated with thousands of these majestic stones. Some are set in circles, others in rows. A few even form doorways that align with the sun at solstice.

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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Daniyal Mueenuddin grew up in two vastly different worlds. As a child, he lived with his paternal relatives in Lahore, Pakistan. As a teenager, he spent summers on his maternal family’s farm in Elroy, Wis.

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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