David Wroblewski Continues Award-Winning Saga of the Sawtelle Family with 'Familiaris'

In his second novel, Familiaris, author David Wroblewski writes the precursor to his #1 New York Times bestselling book, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. Chosen as Oprah’s Book Club Picks, both books follow members of the Sawtelle family and their life on a farm in northern Wisconsin. This story, however, delves into the origin of the family and explores their relationships with family and friends, as well as their deep connection with the dogs they raised and trained. As far as how both stories were chosen as Oprah’s Books Club Picks, Wroblewski remarked, “….no one knows except for Oprah and the people who work with her! …No, I have no idea how they pick. That was a year-and-a half, two-year long ride because, you know, once it gets that kind of attention you spend a lot of time being its butler… you’re there to do service for it in the world. So, when I started on Familiaris, I really felt like I was starting from scratch because I’d only done it once… so how Familiaris ended up being picked for Oprah’s Book Club again, I don’t know any better this time than last time. I’m absolutely grateful for it, of course.”

Regarding his characters, Wroblewski explains that all of them, in some way, were inspired by real people. “There’s no one-to-one match… My job is to steal moments and attributes of people and remix them into different combinations that suit my purposes. I cannot point to one person and say, ‘that’s this person…’ I know is not true, but on the other hand, I have had the great good luck of working with a number of brilliant, brilliant people that I find personally inspiring. They’ve been examples to me of integrity… executing on the idea of crafstmanship, of having very dimensional lives. Some of them are very funny, some of them are extremely creative and I put all that together, and probably chief among those people is Kimberly McClintock who I find inspiring as a partner, and as a friend, and a playmate, and those all went into the bucket, and I pulled qualities out and remixed them as I saw fit.” For Wroblewski, the character he thinks is most like him is the protagonist, John. “I share John’s optimism and as the book went along, I think he became more and more like me. He’s not like me in a number of ways, but I have to admit that there’s some pretty significant overlap between us.”