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Book Nook: Leaving Before the Rains Come, by Alexandra Fuller

Alexandra Fuller is one of my favorite writers. Originally she tried her hand at writing fiction. That didn't work out. She could not find a publisher for it. Then she decided to try writing a memoir. That worked. Her memoirs are extraordinary. This latest one, "Leaving Before the Rains Come" is the story of her marriage and how it all eventually came apart. Her marriage had failed. This book is the post-mortem.

I interviewed her for her previous memoir "Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness." That book was a love letter to her parents. Fuller has had an exotic existence. She grew up in Africa. Her parents still live in Zambia. Her parents have a marriage that has endured through many trials. In her new book Fuller keeps looking back at the tests that their marriage survived. Then she observes the strains that doomed her own marriage. The crucial event that seems to have complicated that relationship occurred when the couple moved to Wyoming from Africa. Fuller's husband took a job that she found to be rather repugnant. As readers we watch as the fragile strands that held them together frayed and eventually unraveled. 

In this interview she describes her journey and her craft. Her voice is as exquisite on the radio as it is on the printed page, perhaps more so. And this is one of the best sounding phone interviews ever. We rarely get this lucky. Enjoy!

Vick Mickunas introduced the Book Nook author interview program for WYSO in 1994. Over the years he has produced more than 1500 interviews with writers, musicians, poets, politicians, and celebrities. Listen to the Book Nook with Vick Mickunas for intimate conversations about books with the writers who create them. Vick Mickunas reviews books for the Dayton Daily News and the Springfield News Sun.