Writer Esther Emery: A Life Reconnected

09/04/22 • 29 min

On this edition of Dialogue, Marcia Franklin talks with Idahoan Esther Emery, who wrote a book about her year off the internet called “What Falls From the Sky.”

Emery talks about the crisis in her life that made her decide to unplug from the web, the challenges she encountered, and how the experience grounded and connected her in new ways to herself and her family.

The two also talk about Emery’s current life living off the electric grid with her husband and three children in the mountains above Robie Creek, about 30 miles from Boise. Emery homeschools her children, and the family raises goats and chickens, along with growing some of their food. Her mother, Carla Emery, was a leader in the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, and the author of the popular “Encyclopedia of Country Living.”

Originally aired: 02/10/2017

On this edition of Dialogue, Marcia Franklin talks with Idahoan Esther Emery, who wrote a book about her year off the internet called “What Falls From the Sky.”

Originally aired: 02/10/2017

Previous Episode

Historian Douglas Brinkley: Everybody Will Talk to Walter Cronkite

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Marcia Franklin talks with historian Douglas Brinkley, Ph.D., about his 2012 biography of iconic CBS newsman Walter Cronkite, who famously announced Kennedy's death to a national TV audience on November 22, 1963.

In "Cronkite," Brinkley (no relation to newscaster David Brinkley) drew on his access to Cronkite's private papers at the University of Texas and interviews with more than 150 of Cronkite's friends and family members to write the first major biography of the "the most trusted man in America."

Franklin and Brinkley discuss the highlights of Cronkite's career and what distinguished him from other broadcasters, as well as some of the eccentricities of Cronkite's personality that Brinkley discovered while researching the book.

Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University, was in Coeur d'Alene to speak at the Idaho Humanities Council's annual Northern Idaho Distinguished Humanities Lecture.

Originally aired: 11/22/2013

Next Episode

Author Anthony Doerr: All the Light We Cannot See

Marcia Franklin talks with Idaho author Anthony Doerr about his bestselling novel, "All the Light We Cannot See," which took ten years to research and write. The book debuted at #10 on the New York Times' Best Sellers list and received glowing reviews around the country. It also won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2015 shortly after this interview.

Franklin talks with Doerr, who lives in Boise, about his novel, which depicts the lives of two European children in World War II, children whose lives ultimately intersect in war-torn Saint Malo, France. The town was nearly destroyed by Allied forces at the end of the war.

Doerr discusses the book's themes, which include the power of radio during that time period, and the moral choices faced by civilians during wartime. Doerr also talks about what kept him motivated during the decade-long writing process.

Originally aired: 07/10/14