BROADCASTS.com

Dana Czapnik has always been drawn to wanderers and wonderers, the kind of fictional characters who are always contemplating who they are and the world around them. But aside from the work of Virginia Woolf, Czapnik said she hasn\u2019t come across many female characters who get those kind of opportunities.

\u201cThat was one of the things that I was thinking of when I was working on this,\u201d Czapnik says of her new novel, The Falconer. \u201cThat I wanted to write a female character who has the space to just be and wonder.\u201d

Salman Rushdie called The Falconer "a deeply affecting tale of a young woman coming of age in a man\u2019s world." The book has been favorably compared to The Catcher in the Rye.  And the main character, 17-year-old Lucy Adler, is "a much better person than Holden Caulfield," according to Nerdette's own Greta Johnsen.

Czapnik talks with Greta all about the book, the nuances of feminism, and nostalgia for the 1990s.