Ann Patchett

Today our guest is the spellbinding storyteller Ann Patchett, joining  us to talk about her new novel The Dutch House.  Patchett is the author of a treasure trove of fiction including 2011's State of Wonder, and 2016's Commonwealth, but she may be most widely known for her award-winning 2002 novel Bel Canto, which crafted a symphonic and deeply humane multi-character story amid an embassy hostage crisis.  She's also the author of the widely lauded memoir Truth and Beauty, a wide-ranging essayist, and a bookseller, the co-founder of Parnassus Books in Nashville, where she lives.  In The Dutch House, Patchett plunges readers into the story of Danny and Maeve, a brother and sister whose lives are bound up in the memory of the house they once lived in and the splintering of their family. Patchett joined B&N's Miwa Messer by phone to talk about composing on her feet, sibling bonds, and what it means to find a home.