Can you talk a little about what that was like being in the Midwest and having come from central Appalachia? And I guess kind of the crossover of trying to explain what it's like growing up here to a different place.

Yeah.

Well, Minnesota is beautiful and I love it so much.

But the reason why I ended up there was because I read a lot of different books by authors in different programs, different MFA programs around the country.

And I sort of landed on this one author that I really loved.

her style.

Her name's Ann Ursu.

Can you talk a little bit about your interest in that and why that meant so much to you? Sure.

What is it about a place that shapes identity so profoundly?

Yeah.

In my story, the mountains kind of represent this like constant hope, this like eternal spring of hope.

The mountains don't really care who is in power, right? They're just mountains.

They've just been there for millennia and they will continue to to grow despite everything happening around them.

And so it's, it's in my book, the main characters live on a mountain homestead, right, that like provides their food and their income.

It's not enough, you know, because in the United States right now, what is happening is this unacknowledged economic collapse, unacknowledged for now, it's coming.

Now, what was that journey like for you? You know, the journey to surviving cancer and how did it, you know, kind of change your perspective on life?

Yeah.

[laughs] So by looking online, I kept coming across this name of this guy named Dr. J. Elliott Coit, and I would f- notice that some of the few things I could find on carob that were informative were from this guy.

He had put together a carob demonstration orchard in s- San Diego County starting in about 1949, I think it started, where he was trialing the best carob.

And so they had gone around the state where there were already lots of carob trees planted because it's, it doesn't need a lot of water.

And in the days before we had huge irrigation projects here in California, that was a perfect tree to be planting 'cause it provides a lot of shade, it provides pods if you want them, and they're really tough through dr- even prolonged drought.

Part of the way it's drought resistant is it has lower water needs, and it has lower water needs partly because it's got very leathery leaves that make sure that the water doesn't come out of it as easily-

Mm-hmm

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