Novelist Claire Vaye Watkins on the beauty & brutality of the desert

The garage door opened at 250-3, and we have a video of the house on fire at 350.

“And contractors in New Mexico have stopped drilling new wells,”

but they're still pumping groundwater to build Trump's border wall. All that and more on Heroin Now Anytime on the NPR app and anywhere you listen to podcasts. This is Fresh Air, I'm Terry Gross. Like the main character in her new novel, Clare Ve Watkins lives in the Mojave Desert near Death Valley. Also like in the novel, the desert around her is being developed by an energy company for solar energy.

Solar my sound like clean energy, great.

But solar on this grand scale is wreaking havoc on the desert ecosystem.

Like many frontier territories, the desert attracts misfits, loners, drifters, and as Watkins puts it, weirdos. In the new novel, each of those types is represented in a small community of people protesting the "green energy" gold rush. But really, what can they do?

“What power do they have to defeat a corporate project already underway?”

Is protest feudal, delusional, self-serving? There's a lot of questions this novel raises. Like, how could a mother decide to live in the desert when her ex-husband and child have moved across the country for a better job and better schools? How has Rose, the new novel's protagonist, been shaped by having had a mother, father, and stepfather who were each addicted to alcohol or drugs?

12 step programs have always been part of her life as a witness or participant.

Watkins' new novel is titled "Yellow Pine," that's also the name of the solar desert project in the book. Her previous novel, "I love you but I've chosen darkness," is her most autobiographical book and quotes from the memoir "My Life with Charles Manson" by her father Paul Watkins. The cover describes Paul Watkins as Manson's number two man. His role was procuring teenage girls recruiting them to join the Manson family.

Claire was six when her father died of cancer. In reviewing her new novel, former Washington Post book critic Ron Charles wrote, "Among the swelling collection of books confronting our imperiled planet, Claire Ve Watkins' fiction remains defiantly alive. Her stories and novels are rooted in the American West that awesome expanse of dunes and deserts that uninformed observers would call empty.

Where life has adapted to the damning conditions of heat and drought, Watkins' finds characters burned away to their elemental anxieties and desires. Claire Ve Watkins, welcome to Fresh Air. Thanks, dear. Happy to be here. Happy to have you. So it's too hot. I would imagine to be in the desert during the summer, so we're using for the summer. Yeah, it is too hot. I'm staying in Orange County. I split my time between

“there and the desert. I think this is the first summer of my life that I haven't spent”

significant time out in the Mojave. Yes, a bit sad. Can you describe the part of the desert that you live in and what the environment is like? Sure. I live in the eastern Mojave Desert about halfway between Las Vegas and Def Valley in a little town called Tokopa where I grew up. It's not for everybody. It's about 100 people. It will be the understatement of energy. It's for about 100 people. It's really beautiful. It's just like staggeringly gorgeous landscape and scenery,

huge, huge mountain ranges. There's a little river that goes through town. The Amigosa River, it's mostly underground, a subterranean river, but it surfaces in these hot springs and there's just this like explosion of life around the river. What kind of life? Well, pretty much anything you can imagine. Birds, bats, insects. Each hot spring has a lot of endemic species. So living creatures that only live right there. Each of them has a little pup fish. Most charismaticly,

probably desert tortoises and then less charming creatures like gigantic black biting horse flies. Yeah, it's a very alive, very biodiverse place. So where you described it's also around where you grew up and it's also where the main character of your new novel lives. So now I want you to describe how it's being developed. Yeah, so the vast majority of land in this part of the country is public land. So it's owned by in theory, all of us, but it's administered by the federal government.

gold rush. So it's extremely sunny. It's a good place for solar development in theory for that

“reason. It's also kind of being besieged by other types of energy development like geothermal and”

mining. I mean, mining has been happening out there for a really long time, although the scale is getting bigger and bigger. The aquifer has been pretty dramatically depleted and, you know, there's there's not a lot of water in this area to begin with in the best of times. So the natural resources are really being pushed to the brink in a pretty dramatic way. And there's been a long long history of environmental injustice, you know, yellow pine and where I live is not far from the Nevada

test site where the federal government detonated almost 1,000 nuclear bombs until 1992 when I was

about in the third grade. So it's a place that's been treated like a wasteland for a really long time.

And that story has been very cooperative and convenient for extraction and exploitation of the natural resources. So I was worried that while I'm really, I feel really convinced that we need to decarbonize the economy and the need for renewable energy is obvious to me. I was really concerned that there would be some really serious sacrifices being made that didn't seem right to me or fair and that I don't think will actually help us transition off of fossil fuels. So in the novel,

there's a small group of protesters who want to stop this development of the desert,

but the novel really does ask the question, like, what's the point? They're not going to win.

There aren't a lot of people around to watch. There's not a lot of media around to report it. They're in the desert. So what do your thoughts about that? Well, yeah, I think at one point they say, you know, it's not a blockade because we're not delusional, but they are still very principled, you know, they can tell that this is wrong. And so I think as a matter of morality, taking action, even though you don't have a real grounded expectation of being successful, I think there's

still value in the action to watch and witness and be able to say that you saw what was there.

“I mean, that's what drove me out to Yellow Pine was that I wanted to be able to say that I saw it”

before it was gone. And I guess I kind of just feel like if you only engage in an action that your certain is going to be successful, that's pretty cowardly, really. You know, I mean, we want to be strategic and effective as activists, but there's no guarantee in any of this stuff, and that doesn't mean it's not still a worthwhile way to spend your life. As you mentioned, you grew up near where there were a lot of atom bomb tests and also near where there's a big disposal site for nuclear

waste. Yes. So how aware of that were you when you were growing up? I was painfully aware of it. I was, I don't remember a time when I ever didn't know about Yucca Mountain that nuclear repository that you're referring to. I mean, and that's another win, you know, there's a lot of very gnarly waste going into that mountain today, but not nuclear waste because of people stood up and said no, you know. So yeah, my parents were involved in activism against nuclear testing and

“against Yucca Mountain and against water projects. And I remember feeling really hurt by it as a”

kid, feeling like, so they think that's okay to do to me. Like, I'm just a kid, you know. It made me feel like we were expendable people or that we didn't, we didn't matter. I mean, that was that's the story usually of this type of exploitation is like there's no one there. Anyway, it's an empty place, you know, and that it's already dead. And that's a really confusing thing to be told when you're a lively kid who, you know, I understood that that was wrong

and I didn't, I didn't deserve it and I know no one does. And yeah, I had a sense of clarity about it that I don't really think has gone away. Were you able to hear the blasts go off? Like, did you

So by the time I came along, the detonations were underground. They were happening in a subterranean way which was ostensibly better because it wouldn't be, you know, releasing directly into the atmosphere.

Exactly. Yeah, but the problem is of course that that's where the water is there is underground.

Oh, right. Yeah. So no, I didn't hear them or see them. My mom had as a kid. She would go up on the roof of her trailer. She told me stories about going up there and they would put like sunglasses on to be safe, you know. And yeah, my grandma worked in casinos and atomic tourism was like a part of our life. What's atomic tourism? Atomic tourism is the most amazing coping mechanism that the people of Southern Nevada came up with to deal with the fact that their own government

was bombing them. It was a phenomenon where people would come to Vegas to watch the detonations and people would dress up as like atomic bomb girls. There were showgirls who had like mushroom cloud head dresses and there would be parties to like bomb detonation watch parties up high in the casinos. There's still a lot of like, I don't know, it's almost like the culture sort of

metabolized this like ghastly, like deeply wrong phenomenon into tourism gimmick. It's incredible.

It is incredible. Yeah, you'll have cancer in the family. Maybe as a result of it, like you write that your father probably died from the mining or from the atom bomb test. This is the thing with environmental injustice which is kind of a wonky academic phrase, but the way I understand it is it means you get less life, you know, that there are some some people who get more time on this earth than than others. Some people are expendable in that in this

model that we have and we think we can kind of cordon it off. It's what activists are talking about when

“they talk about a sacrifice zone. Yeah, we have this myth in America. I think that like we can do”

this stuff elsewhere, like war is something we do elsewhere, but we do it to ourselves too. You know,

when we hurt the land and the air and the water, we're hurting ourselves. So yeah, he could have got it from a number of shenanigans, but at the end of the day, he only lived to be 40 years old. So you describe how living in the desert means living with death all around you. And I want to say that I grew up with westerns on TV and westerns in the movies and one of the like the common themes, one of the common plot points in westerns is that somebody's kind of trekking through the

desert in their lost and they're parched and they're on the verge of death and buzzards are flying overhead or the villain has dragged the hero into the desert and left him or her there to die and

“they're parched and starving and buzzards are flying overhead. So I don't think that's what you mean.”

When you say there's death all around you and the desert. So what do you mean? What is dying all around you? Well, it's not that dissimilar from those tropes. You know, I think to be a small, you know, barely upright, hairless mammal walking around in that climate can be really scary and it does make you feel like, oh, I could die out here. You know, it's not, we're really not that far away, you know, your air conditioning, your car overheats. You're on the side of the road and it's 120 degrees.

There will be buzzards circling and I think there's something primal and immediate about that. And I think I was exposed to it mostly because my, my mom ran this little museum and rock shop on the edge of death valley and a lot of tourists would come through, especially European tourists. Maybe they had seen some of those westerns that you had seen and wanted to have a death valley adventure and and my mom used to say that it was her job to save the European body from the European imagination

and I would listen to her and occasionally people would go missing and I would listen to the dramas of someone not making it, which happens pretty regularly out there. It's an extreme place.

“Did you ever get lost in the desert and worry about dying of thirst?”

Yeah, I have actually, I got a pretty mild heat stroke once when I was in Joshua Tree of all places, the most, you know, gentrified part of the Mojave Desert, forgive me Joshua Tree, I love you.

I could have thrown a rock and hit someone's house probably. I was really not out in the wilderness

“but I got so disoriented and heat does something really wild to your brain and I was kind of not”

sane and couldn't find the path back to my car and everything starts to sort of look the same. I got really disoriented and really panicked and luckily it didn't last that long but yeah, I've been confronted with how quickly it can happen. On the opposite side, like Jesus and Moses spent significant time in the desert. I mean,

Moses got the 10 commandments in the desert. Jesus like fasted for 40 days and 40 nights

and was tempted by Satan. I'm wondering if living in the desert has affected your sense of divinity? Yeah, it has. I wasn't raised religiously or even very spiritually at all so I came to that on my own later in life. I was given the gift of desperation this day and just needed help like I had this... I came to this point in my life where I felt like I had kind of exhausted all the intellectual, secular, educated ways of living and I needed something a lot a lot older.

And when I'm in the desert, I can feel a feeling of being a part of something bigger than me, which is how I think of the divine. I can really appreciate that I'm a part of this living land and I give it something and it gives me something even just thinking about my breath. And these dark times have driven me to Buddhism lately, so I have that practice to kind of draw on and I've done yoga for a really, really long time. So, but yeah, I think I think that that must

be true everywhere that there's a divine part of me and all of this, but it becomes very,

“very clear for me out in the desert and that that's why I need to keep going out there.”

So, in the one hand you're living with death all around you and on the other hand you're experiencing this new sense of divinity living in the desert. So, those are both connected in opposite at the same time. Yes. And in your new novel and in your previous novel, you write a little bit about living in the face of imminent death. And in the new novel, the main character's boyfriend describes how we used to dangle off of a cliff without a rope to feel the presence of God. And he describes it as a meditation

that focuses you because you can't think of anything else but your body and the rock. You feel your breath, you feel the wind on your body. So, it brings you back to your body and it makes you in the world. In your previous novel, I love you, but I've chosen darkness. You write about a boyfriend, Jesse lived like he was dying. Take it for me, you do not want to live with someone who actively lived like he's dying. So, can you talk about both sides of that, you know, the downside of

“living like you think you're dying and the sense of exhilaration? And why is that about this in the first place?”

Well, I thought about this probably because my first memory is my dad dying when I was six.

That's really like where I begin in my story. I mean, he was sick with cancer for a few years before. He died and I don't really remember having a time where death wasn't a really a presence in my family, you know, that his absence changed everything. And I've come to feel pretty grateful for that, actually, because I have not, I mean, I've made mistakes and lived foolishly as much as anyone has, but I have been gifted with not being quite perhaps as in as much

denial of the fact of death as I might have otherwise been. I don't know, our culture is so weird about

as far as I can tell, there's a part of us that is, you know, infinite and divine, like we were

“talking about. And then there's a part of us that's very finite. And only here for a little while,”

as far as we know, and we're in this body and I felt really grateful for that. And it makes me want to live a good life. We need to take a break here. So let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us, I guess as Claire Ve Watkins, her new novel is called Yellow Pine. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Terry Gross and this is fresh air. The midterms are coming and that means the new cycle, which is already intense, is about to get more intense this fall. So this summer is a

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Oh, hey there. I'm Brittany Loose and I don't know, maybe this is a little out of pockets to say,

“but I think you should listen to my podcast. It's called It's been a minute and I love it and I”

think you will too. Over the past couple months, over 100,000 new listeners started tuning in. Find out why. Listen to the it's been a minute podcast from NPR today. The days top headlines, local stories from your community. Your next podcast binge listen. You can have it all in one place. Your pocket. Download the NPR app today. This is fresh air. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Claire Vey Watkins.

Her new novel Yellow Pine is about a woman rose, approaching the age of 40, who like Watkins lives in the Mojave Desert. Rose joins a group of people, misfits, weirdos, protesting an energy company's giant solar project, wreaking havoc on the desert ecosystem. Rose is also chosen to live in the desert while her ex has been actually moved to Philadelphia to accept a better job. And after they agree their daughter would be better off in a Philly preschool, their daughter moves to Philly too.

A painful separation for Rose, but not quite painfully enough for Rose to move to. When the novel begins, Rose is working for an environmental group that she considers part of the non-profit industrial complex. So in each of your last two novels, the main character decides to live far away from her young daughter. In the new novel, the couple has been living in Nevada, but they've been growing apart, they divorce. The husband gets a job in Philly, close to his parents, and his sister,

and they agree it would be best for the daughter to go to preschool there in Philly. But Rose stays out west, moves to the desert and works in a fundraising job with an environmental group. She's kind of relieved to be away from her ex because they've been drifting so far apart, but it's painful to be away from her daughter. In your previous novel, I love you, but I've chosen darkness, the main character goes to the desert where she grew up and decides to stay and leave her husband

in their young daughter behind if they don't want to stay in the desert. What got you thinking about what it means to live far away from your young child? Well, I live far away from my own young daughter for most of the time. She's with me on breaks and on summer vacation. So that's a sacrifice

“that I've chosen to make, and I think it's for her good, I think it's for the greater good,”

the good of the family system. And I think it got me thinking about right sacrifice and wrong sacrifice, parents have to sacrifice for their kids. And I also notice that when there's too much sacrifice, it can get pretty dark, we get into territory of like margarine ourselves or not living our lives in the name of our kids. And it's so much pressure for a kid to have to bear. They didn't ask for that. They didn't ask to be born. So I've just interested in

the process of a parent letting go and in the case of in the book, you know, trusting that

If you're comfortable talking about it, can you talk a little bit more about what the process

“was like of making the decision that this was a good sacrifice and that it was good for the family?”

You know, I think I would probably rather talk about roses approach to it. Sure, that's the main character in your new novel. Right. Yeah. So for rose, you know, the decision is a mixture of good reasons and maybe some bad reasons. Like, she's pretty guilty. At one point, she describes herself as being stopping with guilt when the decision needed to be made. But she has some good reasons, too. She feels like called to defend the land where she lives. She feels that that's

a meaningful purpose. And to have a parent that has a meaningful life, I think is a great gift.

To have a parent that is still like a full, fleshed whole human being, which is what roses

“trying to do. I think that's really, really important for kids. So your previous novel,”

I love you, but I've chosen darkness, starts with this postpartum questionnaire. And it's a multiple choice questionnaire. I want to read some of the questions. One, since my baby was born, I've been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. As much as I ever did be, not quite as much now, see not so much now, the not at all, too. I've looked forward with enjoyment to things. A, as much as I ever did, being not quite as much now, C, not so much now, the not at all.

And so on. And so rose comes up with answers in essay form to all of these like ABCD, multiple choice answers. She counters it with her own real answers. So did you have to take a

survey like that? I did. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That was the first piece of writing that I did that

became that book. I love you, but I've chosen darkness. When my daughter was born, I took this questionnaire and I found the language just very confusing and baffling and funny, accidentally, funny, unintentionally funny. I thought, so yeah, then I thought, well, this should be an essay test and then I started writing these little essays in response to the questionnaire. My doctor's definitely described me as having postpartum depression and I, you know, I followed their advice

“accordingly, but I don't really think that's exactly what was happening. I think I was”

having a kind of an existential crisis. I think it was like a a spiritual confrontation with myself having had this child in doing something really like heroic. A lot of the other stuff that I was doing in my life sort of suddenly seemed really meaningless. And the things that had given me a sense of purpose, like striving in my career, they just suddenly seemed absurd. Can you say more about what this was about this existential crisis?

I was a really ambitious young person and I was striving a lot to do everything in the right way and in the right order, like I was a straight-a student, I did a really well in school, it helped me get out of my kind of crazy family scene. And I was kind of in a survival mode, I think, looking back on it, you know, using like my education and eventually in my profession, like as a university professor to get safe and even using intimate relationships as a way of

getting safe. And then all of that was kind of culminated in having this child and I think I was telling myself a type of, I don't know, almost like a messianic story where like once I arrive at this place and I'm middle class and I have a husband and a child all will be good and it wasn't and I was still myself and I still had, I had like deeper stuff that I needed to confront that couldn't, the, you know, solution wasn't outside in like external validation or money or prizes or

prestigious jobs, it had to like come within. So when she was born, that was really the beginning of me starting to like dig in deep with myself and just I think the way Mary Oliver phrases it is like live your one precious life. Well let me reintroduce you here if you're just joining us my guest as Claire of a Watkins and her new novel is called Yellow Pine. We'll be right back.

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new day and the movie has a more grounded tone than we've seen from the franchise. But does it strike the right balance of fun and darkness? We'll talk about it on NPR's pop culture happy hour. Listen via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Frishair. Let's get back to my interview with Claire Ve Watkins. Her new novel is called Yellow Pine. I want to ask you about your father because he joined the Charles Manson family

and for people who don't know Charles Manson and some of our listeners might be too young

“to have like seen documentaries or read books about him. But why don't you describe Manson?”

Most people have probably described him as the leader of a cult, a cult of young hippies, who were as Joan Dedean says participating in the paranoia of their times and eventually spectacularly so culminated in these murders in Los Angeles in 1969. And my dad was a teenager for him in the beginning the family was all about music and sex and drugs and he'd come from a pretty gnarly household and I think your father.

Yeah. And Manson too. Not incidentally. Yeah. So yeah, Manson was a lot older than most of them. A lot of them were young women. A lot of them had those women, the girls and some of them eventually committed the murders. They had been like given to Manson as children. So it was a really exploitative scene. It sounds like what I would say to people if they're not familiar with him. He became this like boogie man that showed the culture, Joan Dedean described it. The

day of the Manson murders has the day, the 60s ended and it became this fable, this allegory about how the counter-cultural impulse was dangerous and could only lead to murder and mayhem. And it scared a lot of people off of the kind of thing that the hippies were up to and gave their enemies a lot of ammunition. Manson used the whole free love, sex drugs and rock and roll kind of thing to totally exploit women. Young girls, teenagers who just come to California,

who'd maybe run away from home, who had no direction. They just knew they had to get away. And so, you know, he would know how to flatter them and take them to his home and use them sexually. And then apparently your father, because of music, started playing with Manson, because your father played and Manson played. But then your father, as Manson grew like darker, your father became his procurer. He was the one who found the teenage girls and brought them

“into the Manson cult. And I think it's fair to call it a cult. So, like how much of that did you”

know when you were growing up? I know your mother told you some and then you and your sister learn more about, you know, like Manson and your father from books like Vincent Boogliocies, Heltor, Skeletor. But how much did you really know? And I should say your father was not involved with the murders. He wasn't even in town. Yeah, he was out in Death Valley. So, that's kind of where the mythic presence of the desert. And our family, it was almost as if like the

desert saved him from being involved. And Manson was the one who first sent him out to the desert

to find a hole for them to wait out Heltor Skeletor in, you know. And this is a really good point about there's nothing really counter cultural about Charles Manson, maybe except for that. He liked to do drugs. But like he was very sexist, very, very racist, you know. And then he did some time in prison. A lot of time. Do you know how your father ended up being Manson's procurer of

young. He was young enough to enroll. He enrolled in Pacific Palace, a high school, briefly,

“to meet women. It sounds like in my dance book he writes about. And it's a tricky thing,”

because it's a covert in book. I don't know how much of this is actually him. And he's not around for me to ask, you know. But he writes about it as being just like a wonderful time for a kid who is like a comma of age and a really violent repressive like 1950's abusive scary house. Your father turned against Manson, one of the main witnesses who testified against Manson.

Do you know how he decided to do that? When he wanted to leave the family at first Manson said,

okay, that's fine. Then he changed his mind. And they were in like a power struggle for a while. And they were out in Death Valley at the ranches. And eventually there was a night that he describes in his book where he opened the door of the cabin where he was staying with a couple other people who had also defected from the group. And Manson was like squatting there with a knife between his teeth. And so he thought he would be killed. And he walked that night across Death Valley,

basically probably around like 50 miles or so. But he fled for his life. And then went to the police, went to the Inyo County Sheriff. And I think he was trying his best to get safe. He had heard about the murders, but that point people had been kind of like gossiping or alluding to them. I think he was just like getting, you know, a very, very hard reality check and realizing that this was not the like loving paternal guru that he thought he had.

What did your mother know about his involvement with the Manson family when they met and fell in love?

You know, my grandma met my dad first the night before. He was a bartender and she had gone

out to the bar. And I think she told my mom something like, there's a really cute bartender

“out there. He was in some cult, but he's really cute and you should go and like chat him up.”

And my mom did that. And my understanding is they talked about it right away. I think everybody in town pretty much knew. But you're okay with it. Yeah, I think she understood that people make mistakes and can be lost. I mean, she'd definitely like made her share of mistakes. I think some of this was that eventually they got involved in like 12-step recovery, you know, where you are part of the medicine from recovering from addiction is to be honest. So I think they had a pretty

profound philosophical and spiritual tradition that was helping them navigate the complexities of what, I mean, there's just being a human. I want to ask you about solitude. As you write, there's a difference between solitude and being lonely. What do you like about solitude?

And we always comfortable being by yourself. Yeah, I started surfing recently, so I'm like,

I got a lot of surfing when a force going on. You really got to kind of try to like stay in the pocket of not becoming isolated or too lonely or misinthropic, which is a risk for me feeling like other people are bad, like a malevolent force that I want to avoid. I don't like it when I get into that way of thinking. Ideally, solitude helps me be with others. But I have to be able to retreat from them. I also, you know, most of the people I do is in reading and in

“books. And I have to remember that those aren't real people either, you know, as real as they”

can seem. Do you feel that one of the downsides of being with other people is comparing yourself to other people during your coming up short or feeling like you're competing with them in some way? Yeah, that's a real hazard. I mean, comparison, I think is especially for an artist. I think it's pretty much useless. You know, I try not to do it at all. I've had times in my life where I have kind of been on a comparison as like a drug. I'm trying to kick because I'm me, you know,

I'm me. I really, for some reason, for me, it's Sadie Smith. I want to be like, why am I not doing with Sadie Smith is doing? And it's like, well, you're a Claire, babe. You know, Sadie's going to

I feel, I feel best when I can inhabit that and let everybody else just do their own thing, too.

“It's been great to talk with you. Thank you so much. Likewise, Terry. Thanks for having me.”

Claire of a Watkins new novel is titled Yellow Pine. After we take a short break, TV critic David Biancholi will review the new series Furious, created by Elizabeth Merriweather, who also created New Girl, The Dropout, and Dying for Sex. This is Fresh Air. From the light bulb to the internet, human history has been driven by innovation and shortwave is exploring how the technology of tomorrow will transform our future. Would you write in a

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Since the 1970s abortion on screen has been portrayed as either a medical necessity or a dangerous

“decision. On it's been a minute, we discuss how the many depictions of abortion”

have shifted with the politics of the times. Watch the full it's been a minute episode on YouTube or listening to the Empire app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. The new Hulu series Furious stars Emmy Rossum from Shameless, as an FBI agent on the trail of a serial killer. Our TV critic David Biancholi has the studio. Drama is about female lawmakers chasing female fugitives almost to become their own sub-genre.

Killing Eve was a huge hit a few years ago for BBC America. And way back in 1987, the movie Black Widow may have started at all. It showcased Deborah Winger as an investigator in pursuit of a serial killer played by Teresa Russell, who married wealthy man only to murder them. That very movie it turns out was the official inspiration for Elizabeth Maryweather's new Hulu series Furious. Black Widow is even named on screen in the opening credits.

But Maryweather, who's the creator of Furious, has done more than merely update or remake Black Widow. She's totally transformed it, giving it new purpose and depth. With more unpredictable twists and complicated flawed, surprisingly funny characters. All those aspects make sense once you remember that Maryweather not only created the very clever sitcom New Girl, but also two excellent mini-series focused on troubled women, the dropout and dying for sex. In the Black Widow movie,

Deborah Winger was fine as the film's protagonist, but Teresa Russell as the "Commelionic Killer" was way out of her depth. Furious has no weak links whatsoever. Amy Rossum, who played Fiona in Shameless and the title role in Angeline, stars as FBI agent Alice Black. She has an antagonist a relationship with almost everybody, including her boss played by Danny McCarthy, who's got plenty

“of attitude of his own. "You wanted to see me?" "You need to stay in your lane.”

Why am I being told a Brooklyn homicide detective once you're advice on an overdose stuff?" "I worked out of the Brooklyn North Homicide Squad when I was with the NYPD." "I don't care what you did at the NYPD. Your job now is to stay in the applicant pool and answer the phone when the crazy people Google the FBI and call the number on the bottom of their screen. I know you're requested to be assigned a sex crimes, but leadership will assign you an operational squad when you're ready."

"I know that." "You know a detective named Danny Kelly, because he requested your help." "I deal. We worked homicide at Brooklyn North together." "Is this the officer you disclosed having a domestic relationship?" "That wasn't him. That was someone else." "What happened? Bad break-ups that you came running over here, because I like to know these things in advance." "Yeah, and I just told you." Alice is on the trail of a female. She suspects to be a serial murderer,

played by Lola Petacru, the Irish actress from saying nothing. The more we see of her character, who goes by many names and guises, the more slippery she gets. And also, more multi-layered.

When we first meet her, she curls up next to her latest victim, who is collapsed on the stairs.

She injects him with a fatal dose of fentanyl, puts her face right next to his, and watches him die. "I really like listening to you." "I don't like the sounds you're making." "But I love your smile." Before long, she sets her sights on a new victim, a wealthy lawyer whom she targets at a party. She flirts, then sleeps with him, but doesn't kill him. Instead,

for her cat and mouse game to really begin. That game involves him thinking he's the cat not the

mouse, and she's devious enough to adopt whatever personality and push whatever buttons she has to in order to ensnare him in her web. This victim is played by Rob Delaney, who also played a kinky character in dying for sex. "It says I can't say anything about you. I can't do anything to hurt you, or you destroy me. It's like you own me." "No, it's just, you know, it says that you can't share any information, and there's a liability clause, but... "I want you to own me."

"I want to belong to you." "Look, I'm just a lawyer, okay, and I know we did a lot of drugs last night, but I'm not really into the crazy stuff." "What if I just sleep? Stayed here all day. I'll wait for you to come home." "I'm not a can." "You have cameras. You can watch.

“Make sure I don't do anything wrong." "No, I'm not going to give you the key to my apartment." "I don't want”

me key." "I want to be locked up." There's also a third very shrewd woman in furious. Nora,

one of Alice's FBI superiors, played by Quincy Tyler Bernstein. They're all riveting, but the male actors are outstanding too. Not only the ones mentioned already, but also Scoot McNary, Jake Lacy, and Rob Yang as Alice's former and current colleagues. And special notice goes out to Steve Way from the TV series Rammy, who plays an at-home patient cared for by the killer. Like many characters in furious,

he's hilarious one moment, tragic the next. Finally, there's the context and subtext of

furious that gives it even more power. Nora is a student of Greek mythology, and interprets

the myths of both Madusa and the Furies in terms of painting them not just as deadly monsters, but as angry victims. The primary motivation of the murderer in furious turns out to be not greed or bloodlust, but revenge. We've learned slowly about her own dark past, which involves a sex trafficking ring of young girls. There are uncomfortable associations with the Jeffrey Epstein case, which she makes clear when questioning one of her victims just before dispatching it.

“What's the punishment for people, who know what's happening, and do nothing?”

Why are they good? The fugitive and her hunter don't come face to face until partway through this eight-part series. And when they meet accidentally, furious ups its intensity, and once again explores unfamiliar, unforgettable territory. It may owe its inspiration to an old movie, but furious is a boldly original new TV thriller. David Biancoli is fresh airs TV critic, furious premier July 27 on Hulu, and presents new episodes on Mondays through the end of August.

If you'd like to catch up on fresh air interviews in this, like this week's interviews with Jean Smart, the Star of Hacks, and New York Times reported Eric Lipton about his investigations into how the Trump family is profiting from the Trump presidency, check out our podcast,

“you'll find lots of fresh air interviews. You can also watch some of our interviews on our YouTube”

channel, and find out what's happening behind the scenes of our show, and get our producers' recommendations for what to watch, read, and listen to, subscribe to our free newsletter at WHY.org/freshair. Fresh air is executive producer Sam Briger. Our senior producer today is Theresa Madden. Our technical director and engineers, our engineer today is Adam Stanishewski. Susan Nukundi directed today's show, "Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross."

On this season of Planet Money Summer School, we follow the money, and not just the dollars, we're following the Yuan, the Naira, the Kroda, and more. Everyone's day this summer, we're taking you on a world tour, to meet the people, trying new solutions to old economic problems. Planet Money Summer School, perhaps in friends, pack your bags, and don't forget the sunscreen. Listen on the NPRF or wherever you get your podcasts.

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