but he'll is paved with wild weeds. the conifers and sage brushes, the wheatfield, each stem following all the rest inverses of movement, $1 million in spending one after another as great gail didn't their golden

heads. the shape of that didn't last only a moment and is as close as anyone gets to seeing wind. there is a sense of sovereignty that comes from life on a mountain, a perception of privacy and isolation, even of dominion. you can sail on the company for hours afloat on brush and walk. a tranquility amidst share immensity that comes with its magnitude which renders the merely human of no consequence. [applause] >> clearly you are writing this as a first language. hard to imagine writing so beautifully but not coming to books until you are in college.

>> the bible has linguistically, poetically and every other way, narratively not every single word is goals but there is some incredibly beautiful writing in the bible. i had grown up with ambiguity and storytelling and that kind of literary tradition that it wasn't as though language was completely foreign to me, it was foreign to me the idea that i would ever write it. >> it is different from academic writing. >> guest: they are almost diametrically opposed to each other. what it takes to write, you want to say everything in the most direct way possible, you wanted to be directly plane and it is the kiss of death in storytelling.

you building more complexity, let people see the scene and come to their own conclusions that is the great risk in storytelling especially about your own life. if you write a book about your life but is experiential, have that experience and might come to a different conclusion than you do about your life and that is a strange gamble to take. here's what the dilemma is and what it means. they don't think through it and feel through it and come to a conclusion that is going to move them or stay with them. they have to experience it. i decided to write the book. it is not an essay or an

argument, just a story. they can come up with -- all kinds of people come to me, all kinds of different take aways, so glad that i know reconciliation with you. one right after the other. it has nothing to do with me. it has everything to do with them, one of the puzzles in their own lives is the point of the story. exactly what it should be. >> host: you did write it for yourself in some sense. >> guest: i was trying to make sense of it. i was trying to figure out fundamentally if i was a good person.

i wasn't sure i was. i had done something that in my own mind was unthinkable. i had written to my parents and said i love you but i needed to be the case that we don't talk to each other pretty much because there is a word for that called estrangement. i couldn't call it that at the time. i just need space. you are just not allowed to do that. you are a terrible person - i didn't have any other choice. i have been trying to have a peaceful relationship with my family as long as i can remember and it wasn't happening for me. a lot of the reason i wrote the book was to answer that question. >> did you get some resolution?

>> it helps me to see what the truth of it is. sometimes the choices we make that we punish ourselves most for are the ones where we didn't have any choice at all. writing it out, there wasn't another path here. this was the past, just the one past and it helps me make peace with where it ended up realizing it wasn't what i would have chosen to end up, never would have wanted that ending but it was the best ending, and ending i could live with. it wasn't that i stopped loving them but this was the form it had to take for a while. >> host: you figure things out, to create a narrative that is helpful. we are not letting you move on. we are dragging you out and making you talk about this over and over.

>> guest: thanks. a good friend of mine wrote a beautiful book. writing your book, was it really therapeutic? writing a book is terribly therapeutic, publishing a book is not and that was true. >> host: in your family of nine, 7 of you and your parents, you have names in -- contact everybody and use your name and you assume you don't want their name. was there any consideration, it is easy to figure out who your parents are. did you consider publishing under someone else's name?

>> guest: it was pretty tricky. i think you could publish it as a novel. i thought about it is a novel but there were two problems. the first is no one would have believed it. too weird. i'm going to write about a family or memoir, a really long pause on the other line. you won't have to make anything up. if i write this as a novel no one will believe it. the second reason is more serious, if you went through the difficult process with my family, like a lot of other

people, it feels like you are the only person who ever had this problem. i remember thinking, if my mother doesn't think i am a good person. they thought the reason was i was possessed. how did anybody ever trust me again given this reality. if i had a little distance from that, it seemed important that if i was going to write the story and say this happens it needed to have happened to a real person, needed to have someone who stands up and says this is my story. it might be your story, have elements of your story but that person is me and it felt a lot of the point of doing that would be blunted if you couldn't -- fictionalize it and

standing by. i ultimately decided to do what i could to protect privacy and give people as much space as i could. >> characters often get 2-dimensional. you were so successful showing complexity with your brother, sean. so many things are so loving and you talk about, at great risk to himself your father gets you to work with this thing, a big -- shone says i am going to do it and not care. he really loves you and puts himself in arm's way for you and yet is a source of your pain.

>> guest: something i wanted to describe, decent relationship so focused on the negative. they are not recognizable to people experiencing those relationships. i watched this hallmark movie, had a really dysfunctional relationship and i was really young, driving home and i remember there was a moment, i wonder if my relationship with sean -- that guy in that movie was always -- he was always drunk. he was a caricature of a monster and that is what it looks like. except for a tiny percentage of

the time. in my mind, it is fine. something to capture, it is part of the relationship is so compelling. often genuinely loving, compelling people who need help or whatever but at some point you have to ask the hard question can i help this person and if the answer is no how do i take care of myself but i felt, the way i experienced it, which was not completely white or black which made it very difficult to walk away from. >> host: one of the few times you talk about your father being consistently proud of you is you start singing in public.

there is one line that is so ironic, he wanted my voice to be heard. your voice is heard now. >> host: i wonder if you hear the voice your father had in mind. >> guest: i can do that. i always think of him. i haven't sung it in a while. ♪ oh lord my god ♪ when i in awesome wonder ♪ consider all the worlds i

have made ♪ i see the stars ♪ i hear the wrong thunder ♪ throughout the universe ♪ then sings my soul ♪ my savior god ♪ to be ♪ how great thou art ♪ how great thou art ♪ then sings my soul ♪ my savior god ♪ to be ♪ how great thou art ♪ how great thou art

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