A Conversation with David Wroblewski
Celebrating Familiaris
Today we are honored to introduce you to the #1 NYT-bestselling, award-winning author David Wroblewski whose novel FAMILIARIS hits stores everywhere in trade paperback today.
The winner of the 2025 Colorado Book Award for Fiction, FAMILIARIS was Oprah’s Book Club Pick in hardcover for all of Summer 2024 as well as a summer reads pick by Esquire, Newsday, and Minneapolis Star Tribune, among others.
FAMILIARIS is the long-awaited prequel to David's 2008 smash success literary phenomenon, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, which was a #1 New York Times bestseller, an Oprah Book Club pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Indie Choice Best Author Discovery award winner, the Midwest Bookseller Association’s Choice, and the winner of the Colorado Book Award that went on to be translated in more than twenty-five languages. The profoundly human, stirring origin story of the Sawtelle family and the remarkable dogs that carry the Sawtelle name, FAMILIARIS has garnered rave reviews from Richard Russo, Colum McCann, Ron Rash, Tom Hanks, and Oprah Winfrey among others.
Please join me in welcoming David Wroblewski to Friends & Fiction, and in wishing him a very happy paperback pub day today for FAMILIARIS!
You had an unusual path to becoming an author. You studied computer science in college and had a successful career as a computer science researcher. At what point were you inspired to try your hand at writing a novel?
It’s impossible to pinpoint, a slippery slope. Sometime in the late 1980’s, a decade or so out of college, I started taking creative writing classes. These were, at first, mostly an academic exercise: I wanted to explore and perhaps articulate the common craft practices underlying both programming and writing. But the more I looked into it, the more I realized that if I wanted to answer my questions adequately, I would have to take on a large-scale writing project of some kind. It wasn’t until what seemed like a legitimately viable idea for a novel occurred to me, somewhere around 1995, that I felt ready to give it a try. The result, more than a decade later, was the publication of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.
How and when did the idea for The Story of Edgar Sawtelle come to you? How long did it take from when that idea first arose until you were a published debut novelist?
The basic idea came to me very quickly one day in 1994 or 1995, I don’t have a record of the exact date. When I say quickly, I mean over the course of maybe 90 seconds, during which I saw how an old and familiar story might be mapped onto a contemporary setting I knew well: the farm where I grew up. I’m talking about the general outlines, of course, and a few obvious points of alignment. The real work of writing a novel is the slow sentence by sentence, page by page effort of proving that your initial idea is genuinely workable.
Was your experience writing Familiaris different from crafting your first novel? Did you feel pressure to churn out a masterpiece after the astounding success of your debut?
Yes, it was different, but how could it have been otherwise? A sample size of one is unlikely to be representative. Both books were hard to write, but for entirely different reasons. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was a first novel, so I had to learn many basic lessons along the way. It was also an exercise in retelling an old story, which presents unique difficulties. Familiaris turned out to be a far more ambitious project than Edgar (and far more ambitious than I expected.) I wanted it to be as different in tone and structure as possible from Edgar.
As for pressure, the only pressure I felt came from within, and that was the desire to do justice to John and Mary’s story as I imagined it. I very purposely wrote the book slowly in order to not put myself in a position to trying to capitalize on Edgar’s success. Surely a terrible business decision, but for me, creatively essential.
Did you always know that you wanted to return to the Sawtelle story? Was the origin story presented in Familiaris in you all along, or did it come to you well after your debut was published?
John, who is Edgar’s grandfather, kept popping up while I was writing Edgar, mainly in the form of family legends that really had no place in Edgar’s story. Virtually all those passages had to be discarded, but by the time I finished Edgar I felt I knew John very well and wanted to see what would happen if I gave his story a chance to play out on its own terms.
Sixteen years have passed between the publication of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and Familiaris. Were you concerned about the prequel finding its readership?
Of course. As the scale of the project gradually became clear, I worried about many things, especially the daunting length of time it was going to take to do it right. But I’ve never found a way to rush the writing process that doesn’t backfire, and quickly. It just takes as long as it takes. So, I did the best I could to put that worry out of my mind.
Do readers need to have read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle first to enjoy Familiaris? Or can the books stand alone and/or be enjoyed in either order?
They can be read in either order – this is why I never call Familiaris a prequel (besides the fact that “prequel” has to be one of the ugliest portmanteau terms ever coined.) The two novels are interlocking stories. Either can act as the entry point for both, though readers will have quite a different experience depending on which order they choose.
Maybe the best alternative to “prequel” was suggested to me by Danny Goldin, owner of Boswell Books in Milwaukee: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and Familiaris are “companion novels.” I like that.
What do you hope readers come away with after reading Familiaris?
A novel isn’t merely a story. It’s a ride the reader takes, woven through days or weeks of their life. My main hope is that readers will have an entertaining, exciting, engrossing ride, ideally one they’d like to take again. Beyond that, I also hope readers will finish Familiaris with a renewed sense of optimism. John’s goal, as a young man, was to create something lasting and beautiful—the “one impossible thing” he challenges his friends to find and make—and it would be great if readers came away with a renewed sense that they can and should do the same!
About the Author
David Wroblewski is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, an Oprah Book Club pick, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and winner of the Colorado Book Award, Indie Choice Best Author Discovery award, and the Midwest Bookseller Association’s Choice award. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle has been translated into over twenty-five languages. He lives in Colorado with the writer Kimberly McClintock.
About the Book
Oprah’s Book Club Pick for Summer 2024
Winner of the 2025 Colorado Book Award for Fiction
“An extraordinary journey that brilliantly interweaves history, philosophy, adventure, and mysticism to explore the meaning of love, friendship, and living your life’s true purpose.”—Oprah Winfrey
The follow-up to the beloved #1 New York Times bestselling modern classic The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, Familiaris is the stirring origin story of the Sawtelle family and the remarkable dogs that carry the Sawtelle name.
It is spring 1919, and John Sawtelle’s imagination has gotten him into trouble ... again. Now John and his newlywed wife, Mary, along with their two best friends and their three dogs, are setting off for Wisconsin’s northwoods, where they hope to make a fresh start—and, with a little luck, discover what it takes to live a life of meaning, purpose, and adventure. But the place they are headed for is far stranger and more perilous than they realize, and it will take all their ingenuity, along with a few new friends—human, animal, and otherworldly—to realize their dreams.
By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, mysterious and enchanting, Familiaris takes readers on an unforgettable journey from the halls of a small-town automobile factory, through an epic midwestern firestorm and an ambitious WWII dog-training program, and far back into mankind’s ancient past, examining the dynamics of love and friendship, the vexing nature of families, the universal desire to create something lasting and beautiful, and of course, the species-long partnership between Homo sapiens and Canis familiaris.
Reviews
“A tender feat of humanity, loyalty, and hope, Familiaris is a quietly stunning, atmospheric prequel story that explores the history of mankind's ambition (and the millennia-long interspecies bond that got us here).”
—Barnes & Noble
“An epic novel with an expertly crafted setting and dialogue, and characters so rich, layered, and undeniably human, it will have you racing through the pages.”
—Colorado Book Awards
“Spellbinding...This warm, big-hearted novel pays tribute to the joys of curiosity and creation and turns out to be surprisingly funny, even as storm clouds gather on the family's horizon.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“‘Suppose you could do one impossible thing,’ John Sawtelle says in David Wroblewski's stunning new novel Familiaris. What would you do? Clearly, what the author would do and has done is write this impossibly wise, impossibly ambitious, impossibly beautiful book.”
—Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of the North Bath trilogy (Nobody's Fool, Everybody's Fool, and Somebody's Fool)
“Already having drawn comparisons to Russo, Irving, Strout, McCarthy, and Gilbert, with García Márquez added here, Wroblewski earns them all, amply rewarding readers who have been waiting impatiently for fifteen years...This colossus of a book will own you, and you will weep to be freed.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“An extraordinary journey that brilliantly interweaves history, philosophy, adventure, and mysticism to explore the meaning of love, friendship, and living your life's true purpose.”
—Oprah Winfrey
“At the center of the book is a huge barn; a cozy, warm home; and two characters whose hearts are filled with love, courage, a sense of humor, and a bright burning desire to bring something beautiful into the world. Dogs.”
—BookReporter
“By taking us back to the origins of the Sawtelle family, Wroblewski has set a storytelling bonfire as enthralling in its pages as it is illuminating of our fragile and complicated humanity. Familiaris is as expansive and enlightening a saga as has ever been written.”
—Tom Hanks, Academy Award-winning actor, bestselling author of The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece and Uncommon Type
“David Wroblewski is one of the few contemporary authors who can create a world that the reader doesn't merely visit but fully inhabits. And what a world it is, rich with love and joy and heartbreak. And wonder, especially in the way human and canine form inseparable bonds. It has been a long wait for a new Wroblewski novel. The wait is worth it.”
—Ron Rash, New York Times bestselling author of Serena, In the Valley, and The Caretaker
“I am just one of the legions of fans who has been waiting since 2008 for another book by David Wroblewski. Good news: Familiaris is here...You can dive into this massive reading project assured of a good time...You’re going to be sad when it’s over.”
—Marion Winik, The Weekly Reader (WYPR)
“If you're looking for well-written story you can lose yourself in, then you must read Familiaris by David Wroblewski.”
—KRCU Public Radio
“If you've read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, you know that no one writes about dogs with more insight than Wroblewski...This great American novel bustles with life, and if it takes all summer to read it, who cares.”
—Newsday
“Like many readers, I adored The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, with its gripping tale of treachery and the magnificent Sawtelle dogs. Now I adore Familiaris. David Wroblewski is a wonderfully inventive writer; he knows so much--how to test a tractor, how to make a table, how to borrow money, how to see the future--but best of all he is a writer of extraordinary characters, human and canine, who will take up residence in your mind and heart. A dazzling and irresistible novel.”
—Margot Livesey, New York Times bestselling author of The Road from Belhaven and The Flight of Gemma Hardy
“Listeners will be fascinated by the origin story of the Sawtelle family...Poe's distinctive characters, tone, and pacing perfectly reflect the storyline.”
—AudioFile
“Moving, funny, heartbreaking, mysterious, and magical...[an] unforgettable journey.”
—Post and Courier
“Mythic in its proportions and riveting in its finely textured portrait of life in Wisconsin's Northwoods, the Great American Novel vaults Wroblewski into the rarefied company of epic storytellers like Cormac McCarthy and Gabriel García Márquez.”
—Esquire
“No writer understands the depths of dogs' natures the way David Wroblewski does, and once again we have a vital, absorbing, and remarkable fiction fueled by this understanding. Familiaris is a rare novel, modest and epic.”
—Joan Silber, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of Secrets of Happiness and Improvement
“Tender, ambitious, fierce, deeply human, and of course wonderfully canine, David Wroblewski's second novel is an American tour de force. There were moments when reading that I thought of Russo, Irving, Strout, McCarthy, Gilbert, and then just Wroblewski himself. A story spun out over generations, to be read for generations, this is a big brave book that is old fashioned in the very best sense of the word.”
—Colum McCann, National Book Award winner and author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin
“There are beautiful passages on the bonds between humans and animals and plenty of folksy charm. Fans of the first book will be satisfied.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Wroblewski's talent dances on the page in a searingly gorgeous novel written with piercing, insightful language. Readers of David James Duncan, John Irving, and George Saunders will fall in love...By the end of this book, readers will wish for even more.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
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