Wally Lamb Finds Real Life Inspiration For Novel 'We Are Water'

Bestselling author Wally Lamb's "We Are Water" came out in paperback this month. The book interweaves the story of a present day artist whose life is overshadowed traumatic events of her past and a 1950s African-American artist who dies under suspicious circumstances.

As Lamb told Here & Now's Robin Young when the book was first published in October, his own past helped inspire the book: when Lamb was 12, devastating flood hit his hometown of Norwich, Conn., and as he says, "I still have vivid memories of the roaring water rushing past and also the screams of the people buried alive in a mill that collapsed."

Norwich was the home of the African-American artist Ellis Ruley, who also died under mysterious circumstances in 1959 and whose story also provided inspiration for Lamb.