Susan Straight, whose books include “Mecca,” “In the Country of Women” and more, is the author most recently of “Sacrament.” A Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Straight has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, Granta, Ploughshares and more. A Riverside native , Straight is the Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. She’ll be appearing on the Nov. 21 episode of Bookish , and here she takes the Book Pages Q&A .

Q. Please tell readers about your new book.

“Sacrament” is a novel about a group of nurses working in San Bernardino during the late summer of 2020, when they’re taking care of patients in critical condition during t

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