Scott Turow Revisits Old Friend Rusty Sabitch

Summary

The Book Case: Scott Turow Revisits Old Friend Rusty Sabitch

Release Date: January 16, 2025

Introduction

In the January 16, 2025, episode of The Book Case, hosts Charlie and Kate Gibson welcome acclaimed legal thriller novelist Scott Turow. Recorded aboard a cruise ship crossing the North Atlantic, the episode delves into Turow's latest work, "Presumed Guilty," and explores his creative process, character development, and the broader themes woven into his storytelling.

Exploring "Presumed Guilty"

Presumed Guilty marks the third installment featuring Rusty Savage, Turow's iconic defense attorney. Charlie Gibson introduces the book by recounting Rusty Savage's journey from his tumultuous past in Presumed Innocent to his retirement at 77 years old. In this sequel, Rusty is drawn back into the legal fray when he takes on the defense of Aaron, the adopted African American son of his fiancée, Bea (00:54 - 03:13).

Kate Gibson highlights the novel's compelling narrative, emphasizing Rusty's introspection on his legal career and the effectiveness of the judicial system. She remarks, "Rusty's sort of looking back on his life and philosophizing about the law... It's really interesting" (03:13 - 03:55).

Charlie adds his appreciation for Turow’s authentic courtroom depictions, stating, "Scott does a better job of putting you in a courtroom realistically than any of the television shows do" (03:55 - 04:00). This realism sets Turow’s work apart, offering readers an immersive experience that transcends typical television portrayals of legal drama.

In-Depth Conversation with Scott Turow

Charlie Gibson initiates a conversation with Turow, probing the reasons behind revisiting Rusty Savage after a 15-year hiatus. Turow explains his sense of responsibility towards Rusty, stating, "I felt like I owed him a better outcome than that" (04:36 - 05:18). This commitment to character continuity underscores Turow's dedication to his literary universe.

Kate Gibson inquires about aging Rusty and maintaining story coherence over the years. Turow responds, "The way my books have sort of come forward is that they have been pretty honest to the passage of time... It means that I get to write about my own time of life" (05:40 - 06:49). This approach ensures that characters evolve naturally, reflecting real-life changes and experiences.

Themes of Racial Justice

A significant aspect of Presumed Guilty is its exploration of racial justice, with Aaron being an African American accused of murder in a predominantly white community. Kate asks Turow about the intentional inclusion of race in the narrative. Turow explains, "It would make concrete how much of an outsider this young man feels himself to be" (10:09 - 11:21), highlighting the societal and personal challenges faced by minority individuals within the legal system.

The Writing Process

When discussing his writing methodology, Turow distinguishes his approach from other novelists by emphasizing structured plotting essential for courtroom dramas. He shares, "I don't try to make it cohesive or even coherent. And I do that for about a year... and then I sit back and say, okay, now how is this all going to make sense?" (11:54 - 12:55). This disciplined process ensures that his stories are both thrilling and methodically sound.

Courtroom Procedurals: Accuracy vs. Entertainment

Kate inquires about balancing legal accuracy with narrative excitement. Turow asserts, "What's going on in a courtroom is so incredibly dramatic... as long as you make the stakes clear to the reader, they will come along for the ride" (13:19 - 14:16). He believes that the inherent drama of legal battles can captivate audiences without compromising factual integrity.

Flawed Characters and Human Complexity

The conversation shifts to character development, with Charlie noting the depth of flaws in Turow's characters. Turow responds, "Nobody in this book is a complete hero. Nobody's a complete villain... that's how I see human beings" (20:41 - 22:29). This nuanced portrayal adds realism and relatability, reflecting the imperfect nature of individuals and the complexities within the legal system.

Rapid-Fire Questions

The hosts engage Turow in a rapid-fire segment, covering various topics:

• Who’s More Important: Who Did It or Who’s on Trial?

  • Turow: "Mystery novels have to say who did it and probably why. So that's what's at the core" (23:02).

• Languages of His Books:

  • Turow: "It's about 40 languages... it's both a thrill and an amusing experience" (23:16).

• Lesser-Known Book Recommendations:

  • Turow: Recommends The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson and works by Bernard Malamud, such as The Assistant and The Magic Barrel (24:06 - 24:45).

• Opinions on TV Courtroom Dramas:

  • Turow: Expresses concern over inaccuracies but acknowledges the dramatization aspect, sharing a story from his mentor Wallace Stegner about maintaining authenticity (24:57 - 27:38).

Closing Reflections

As the episode concludes, Charlie and Kate reflect on the profound insights shared by Turow. They emphasize the importance of defense attorneys and the weight of their responsibilities, drawing parallels to real-world legal practices.

Turow offers a poignant coda from Presumed Guilty:

"BNI will move on, but I will go with no regrets or second thoughts about my decade and a half out here in Skagen. Within the profound silence of the country, I have, like Aaron, come to feel more of myself. I've healed, loved well and been loved. Known regrets, some deep. But best learn to live as I will live now in the time I have with gratitude." (30:10 - 30:41).

Production Credits

The Book Case is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America, edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Executive producers include Laura Mayer and Simone Swink, with additional acknowledgments to team members at Good Morning America and ABC Audio.

Conclusion

This episode of The Book Case offers a deep dive into Scott Turow's latest novel, Presumed Guilty, while illuminating his thoughtful approach to storytelling, character development, and the interplay between law and literature. For fans of legal thrillers and aspiring writers alike, Turow's insights provide valuable lessons in crafting compelling, realistic narratives that resonate with readers.

Transcript

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[Charlie Gibson]

All right, bookcasers, we're with you again and we're glad you're with us. I'm Charlie Gibson, the latter half of the bookcase with Kate and Charlie.

[Kate]

I'm Kate and that makes me what, the former half like the latter and the former Right. Like I don't know. But either way, I'm Kate and it's always lovely to have you with us.

[Charlie Gibson]

And this week is actually a little bit of a technical marvel. I am, I am at the moment, as you hear my voice in the North Atlantic on a cruise ship on a crossing from Southampton to New York. And we're making this work. I just, it's unbelievable to me. And it's especially important that we get this done because we have somebody that I suspect every listener that hears our voice right now has read. You should tell them who we've got, Kate.

[Kate]

Yeah, we're talking to the fabulous Scott Turow. And my first exposure to Scott Turow was Presumed Innocent, which was, in some ways, it was massive. It was like, it's better written than this. Sorry, Dan Brown, but it was like the Da Vinci Code of its time. You know, if you hadn't read it, people were going, did you know who killed her? Do you know who killed her? And then it became this huge film, Presumed Innocent with Harrison Ford. And now Scott Turow has written the sequel, which is compulsively readable. And I just love it. It's called Presumed Guilty and it is worth it. Go out and get yourself a copy. It is a page turner, especially if you love page turning courtroom procedural drama, thrillers. It's, it's awesome.

[Charlie Gibson]

If you read Presumed Innocent, and I think everybody did, you'll remember Rusty Savage. This, this book goes back years and years and years. But then he wrote Innocent, which also featured Rusty Savage. And now for the third time, he's written about Rusty Savage, who, as you'll remember, and Presumed Innocent, he was the accused, accused of killing Carolyn Polhemus. And in this book, he is now retired. He's 77 years old. Scott has let him age. He, he has sown his wild Oats since Presumed Innocent and has now fallen in love with a woman named Bea B E A. And she has an adopted son who is African American. And that adopted son Aaron is accused of a murder. Rusty takes the case. Rusty defends Aaron, and therein lies the plot.

[Kate]

There's some terrific writing in this book. Also. Rusty's sort of looking back on his life and philosophizing about the law. You know, has his career really meant anything? Has he saved anyone? Does the judicial system work? It's really interesting. I think, catching up with this hero in his 70s. It creates a whole new perspective on the mystery that I really enjoyed. It's a very well written book.

[Charlie Gibson]

Yeah, all of his books are. And the other thing is that he really does educate you. As somebody who covered a number of trials in his days as a journalist, I think Scott does a better job of putting you in a courtroom realistically than Earl Sternly Gardner could do than any of the television with Perry Mason than any of the television shows do. Dick Wolf. Yep, Dick Wolf. It's all. Which is not to say that those aren't most entertaining venues, but he really does a wonderful job of educating you truly in what a courtroom is like and truly what the emotions are of the defense attorney, of the defendant, of the defendant's family, and even in this case, in the victim's family. He does a wonderful job.

[Kate]

And the judge. And the judge.

[Charlie Gibson]

And his wife.

[Kate]

Yep. I love the judge in this book.

[Charlie Gibson]

Yeah, she's wonderful. So we presume you will read it. And we had a. Oh, that was.

[Kate]

Such a dad joke. Dad joke alert.

[Charlie Gibson]

Okay, all right, enough of this, Kate. Enough of putting me down. Let's get to the conversation. The conversation with Scott Turow. Foreign Scott Turow. It's a pleasure to have you in the bookcase. I've been reading your work for Lord knows how many years, more than I want to admit, but welcome back. Rusty Savage. In 15 years, you haven't written about him. Why bring him back?

[Scott Turow]

Rusty, when I last parted company with him, was just recently released from prison, and his life was pretty much shattered. And he announced this intention to go north to the. The rural area where his family always had a cabin. And. But he wasn't a happy guy. And I just felt like I. I owed him a better outcome than that. You know, there are. There are certain characters, Charlie, that do cross your mind when you're not writing about him. And so I was thinking about him, and I just wanted to check in on his life now.

[Kate]

So it seems to me when you Decide to write a sequel to a book that was such a massive hit, you have lots of choices to make. Spencer, God love him, hasn't aged a year in, like, seven decades. But you choose in this book to meet Rusty again in his 70s. So how do you go about. When you decide you're gonna rejoin a beloved character like this, how do you go about making those choices? And what do you owe your readers in terms of backstory?

[Scott Turow]

Yeah, obviously a very good question. The one thing, though, about the way my books have sort of come forward is that they have been pretty honest to the passage of time. Other characters have similarly progressed and become the subject of novels, even when they were characters in the background. I had a journalist named Stu Dubinsky who, you know, was a courthouse reporter and ended up as the narrator of a. Of a, like, the sixth or seventh novel I wrote. So that kind of fixes me in real time. In other words, it's not just Rusty's age because there's an entire universe of characters, including, you know, people like his son or Sandy Stern, who makes a cameo in this book. And if I started messing with that timeline, I think I would really, really confuse myself. I mean, it's a fictional world. You can do what you want. And of course, Kate, the other advantage it gives you is, you know, Rusty started out a couple years older than me, and he's still a couple of years older than me. But it means. It means that I get to write about my own time of life.

[Charlie Gibson]

Though Rusty is now retired and he has a decision to make in this book whether to agree to defend the adopted African American son of his fiance. B. You raise the questions over and over in this book whether he should take the case. Is he too old? Could it cost him the love of his fiance? If you were lawyering, Scott, if you were back in your lawyering days, would you take Aaron's case? Would you defend him, given all of the potential problems for Rusty that that might present? And did you struggle with how to write that aspect of the story and have Rusty's decision to take the case make sense?

[Scott Turow]

You know, when. When B. First tells Rusty, I think you should be the person to defend Aaron, he laughs out loud. But it becomes a case of necessity. Certainly it's a first degree murder case. It's in a rural county where there aren't many murders. And so there are no experienced criminal defense lawyers who've handled those kinds of cases. Unless he were to go to one of the big cities in the area. You know, think Chicago or Milwaukee or Kendall county, the imaginary place where I've situated my characters for years. And one of the things that I think is a reality of American life is that rural folks don't feel real comfortable with city people these days. They think they don't understand their lives. And that frankly, in to my observation, is true. So everybody knows that if a city lawyer comes up there that that's not going to go down well, that that lawyer is going to start out well behind. So Rusty can't find somebody with the requisite experience in the area. And you know, as he, as he tells B to begin with, you know, you don't want somebody trying a first degree murder case representing your son. We wouldn't want somebody performing brain surgery on him that we hadn't done it before. The same thing's true with the lawyer. But it turns out that he's the most experienced lawyer available. And of course, as he puts it, he's going to work cheap. But the reality is that a case like this would bankrupt a middle class family and they would be. And her ex husband would virtually have to mortgage everything they, they had to pay private counsel. So that's another thing that Rusty brings to the party. But the last thing is the point that his son makes to him, which is if what you're really concerned about is preserving your relationship with Bea, and I've never seen you this happy, so I understand that you want to preserve that relationship. How do you think she's going to feel if you refuse to do this and Erin gets convicted, even though it's a damned if you do and damned if you don't, you're probably better off at least doing as she asks, as she feels you've done everything you could to save her child.

[Kate]

There's a theme about racial justice in this book. Aaron is an African American. He's being tried in a largely white community. The victim of the crime is white. Did you know when you sat down to write this that that would be such a strong component of the book? And is there a reason why now you thought that was important?

[Scott Turow]

You know, I had sort of outlined the book to my editor, Ben Sevier, and everything was pretty much as I wrote it except for that. And I called Ben up and I said, what do you think if Aaron is black? And there was a long silence, of course, because, you know, we live in the United States of America and this century and race remains an incredibly complicated subject. And I just, I had a visceral feeling that it would make concrete how much of an outsider this young man feels himself to be, you know, and he's naturally that way. He's very self contained. His idea of a great time is to go away in the wilderness and be by himself. I could have left it at that. But when there's a reason for him to have been so self contained and even self enclosed, it becomes easier to comprehend with him being one of the few African Americans in this community.

[Charlie Gibson]

Scott, Kate and I have talked to many very accomplished novelists now in the two and a half years of doing this podcast, and I would say a majority have told us they start with an idea and just follow the story as they write, with no idea at the outset where their imagination may take the story. But it strikes me you can't do that with a, with a courtroom drama or novel. You have to know what the evidence is going to be. You have to decide on the verdict all in advance. So how do you plot out in detail what you're going to write before you put down word one?

[Scott Turow]

I don't. I spend usually spend about a year doing what all those other writers you've talked to do and sort of, as I put it, wander around inside the book. I've got an idea. I have a notion of what might happen. The most important thing, of course, is who the characters are, who the people are. And I try to get a feel for that as I write. And I, because of the way I wrote Presumed Innocent on the morning commuter train, I just developed this habit of writing every day what I want to write. And that means if I've got an idea for a scene at the end of the book, I'll write that. If there's a building I want to describe, I'll write that. I don't try to make it cohesive or even coherent. And I do that for about a year. And then I sit back and say, okay, now how is this all going to make sense? And I even sometimes say, how is this going to end?

[Kate]

So I was a devoted law and order watcher that always wanted to rush through the first half an hour so we could get to the law part.

[Scott Turow]

Right.

[Kate]

And I love your courtroom procedurals, but it seems to me that the legal system is also very boring and full of red tape. So how do you go about writing a courtroom procedural knowing that you have to move the action forward and yet educating your audience on how a courtroom really works?

[Scott Turow]

Yeah, I think the secret for me, Kate, has been that you can put me down in a courtroom anywhere in the Western world, and I will be fascinated by what is happening and because it's so interesting to me, I've tried to explain those elements to readers. And that's my bottom line assumption is that what's going on in a courtroom is so incredibly dramatic that even though you know legal jargon and the tiresome debates between lawyers often makes it seem like you're watching paint dry when you get into the fundamentals of what's actually happening and the stakes of all of these tactical arguments that Rusty and the prosecutor are what's going back and forth between them. As long as you make the stakes clear to the reader, they will. They'll come along for the ride.

[Kate]

So we'll take a break so we can find out who makes this podcast possible, and then more of our conversation with Scott Turow.

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[Charlie Gibson]

There was one passage in the book that really struck me, and I'm going to quote you, quoting you said, throughout my career, I've known men and women who thrive on court who relish being the center of attention and the daily duel with their opponents. In my own mind, I've thought of these people as the real trial lawyers. I'm no better than a journeyman who was never willing to say that I love being in court, but I am alive here, making full use of everything I have as a human. Is that Rusty talking or is that Scott Turow?

[Scott Turow]

Well, very often when Rusty talks, he's saying things that I might have said as well. And that passage certainly is true for me. I never. As many cases as I. As I tried throughout a long career, I never quite got over. Over the jitters of doing it. And yet it was so bloody exciting that you couldn't, if there wasn't so much at stake, you'd actually really enjoy it because it was so exciting. But for me, the stakes were always enough to, you know, make my. My gut clench and my heart skip a beat. But that passage is straight from my heart. The stakes are extraordinary. The defendant's life is never going to be the same after that moment. Either she or he is going to be imprisoned most often, or they're going to walk free, and this is going to just be a bad memory. And even. Even with the birth of which obviously is to the parent, of course, a paramount moment. You know, we're lucky enough to live in a day and age when our expectation is that child's going to be healthy and going to live a long life. And thank God that's generally true. Very often with a verdict, you have no clue, and so you're in intense suspense.

[Kate]

That passage struck me to the heart as well, dad, but for a different reason, because. And I love what you just said about. I think I would have enjoyed it if it wasn't so important, because to me, that sums up completely how you felt about your job, dad. There was never a time where you didn't have the jitters, and yet it was so important. And if it hadn't been so important, maybe you would have enjoyed it a little.

[Charlie Gibson]

Yes. I mean, when you're reporting on things that actually matter. I felt that way in every trial that I covered. There is a moment of majesty when a jury walks in the room and I suspect the Most important trial I ever covered was John Mitchell and John Ehrlichman and Haldeman and Martian and Parkinson, the two people that people don't remember. And Judge Sirica is a hero in my mind. He is one of the most incredible characters I ever. And that moment when the jury walked in, which was on New Year's Eve and they had worked all through Christmas, Judge Sirica told him that they would expedite the trial, cut the days, keep the court in longer each day in order to get the trial to them well before Christmas. And they all said, no. The jury said, no, that's not favorable. That's not fair to the defendants. It's not fair to the lawyers. It's not fair to the verdict. And at that point, the jury had such majesty to me that I will be forever in awe. And now we're in a time when people are turning against institutions and some politicians are, I think, are increasing their cynicism about the law. But it's really important.

[Scott Turow]

One of the things that always impresses me about juries is not, frankly, that they always get it right because I've been involved in cases where I think they were wrong. But it's the utter seriousness with which they take their jobs. You do not have to explain to them what it means to be deciding the fate of another human being. And they know it's a big deal in some cases. Probably the greatest practical impact they're going to have on another person leaving aside their members of their family and. And they do work with the sense of the. Borrow Charlie's words, the majesty and the importance of what they're doing.

[Charlie Gibson]

All of your characters, Scott, it seems to me, have flaws, deep ones, in some case even Rusty. It wasn't just Carolyn Polhemus that he was dallying with. He cut a pretty wide swath in the intervening years before this book. His fiance, Bea, is no angel either. Is it more fun to write flawed characters?

[Scott Turow]

It seems to me, Charlie, to be much closer to the truth. You know, it. It's who we are. And, you know, when Sidney Pollock came to see me after he bought the film rights for Presumed Innocent, right. Said, I'm going to give you one thing I won't change. And he said to me, what is it? I said, don't lose the shades of gray. Nobody in this book is a complete hero. Nobody's a complete villain. And that's the way I see human beings. Do we do bad things? Yeah, we do bad things. Do we do great things? Yeah, we do great things, too. And you know, nobody is at their best every moment of their life. And I think of that, though, the fact that people are so imperfect in my world as being an important lesson about the law. It's no secret that I think of the law as a noble human enterprise. That enterprise is carried out by human beings who are deeply flawed and whose flaws often infect the system as a result. And there's a lot of that in Presumed Guilty that, you know, one of the things that ends up being on Aaron's side is the way the case was put together. And I, I just hope in liking these people. Readers recognize that, okay, sometimes the law blunders and it blunders because of the people who are enacting its various mandates. It's still a noble purpose even when it airs. It's an enterprise that really dignifies our lives in society.

[Charlie Gibson]

I think that's a good point at which to end. It's a nice summation of what we all hope that the law can produce and that we recognize that its intents are pure, that when the system works perfectly, it is as good a system of adjudication, I think, as we've ever been able to come up with. Let's turn to some rapid fire questions.

[Kate]

Rapid fire questions for Scotcharow. What is more important in your books, who did it or who's on trial for it?

[Scott Turow]

I think at the end of the day, mystery novels have to say who did it and probably why. So that's what's at the core.

[Charlie Gibson]

Any idea how many languages in which there are Scott Turrou books?

[Scott Turow]

Well, I like to joke that the breakup of the former Soviet Union was of course, a boon to authors because there were all these suppressed languages where people suddenly wanted a, you know, those, those, you know, the former Yugoslavia. There were just, it was a growth of many languages. And so I would say it's about 40 languages. I can show you the bookcases full of books in all those different languages. And it, look, it's, it's both a thrill and, and a amusing experience to pick up a book and know you don't understand a single word in this book because you don't really speak that language. They could have translated, you know, they could have translated the sports page and put your name and you wouldn't be any the wiser.

[Kate]

Lesser known book you recommend to everybody.

[Scott Turow]

I will say it's, it's not, it doesn't come up much in current discussion. But among more contemporary books, I would say the Orphan Master's Son, which won the Pulitzer Prize, and it's set in North Korea. It's a magnificent and frightening book. And if I can name two, I would say that the works of Bernard Malamud in general have sort of fallen out of favor. And, you know, books like the Assistant and the Natural and his book of stories, the Magic Barrel, no person who picks those books up will be disappointed.

[Kate]

When you watch courtroom scenes on tv, do you find yourself amused? Do you find yourself analyzing which ones got it right? Or do you find yourself just wanting to throw the remote control at the television set?

[Scott Turow]

To me, it's a problem when courtroom scenes don't match what I know the rules to be. But it's also, you know, it's a philosophical point. And you know David. David E. Kelly, who adapted Presumed Innocent for this, the Apple series and is going to, along with the. Along with J.J. abrams, company adapt presumed guilty.

[Kate]

Ooh.

[Scott Turow]

You know, and when I've. When I've talked to David about this, he thinks his first loyalty to the audience is to dramatize. And if you stick too much with the rules of the courtroom, you can lose that. And so when I say it's a philosophical point, I mean, I have unbelievable respect for David, and that's the way he wants to do it. I don't. I want to go to that sense that I had when I first decided to write about the courtroom, which is this. This is incredibly exciting. And when you really understand what's happening here, it's even more exciting. So. And I think both approaches are valid, but for me, when I see, you know, scenes that I know could not take place in court. Well, let me. I'll interrupt myself for one second and tell a long story, which you guys should feel free to get rid of. But when I was a writing fellow at Stanford, one of my great mentors was Wallace Stegner, legendary American novelist. And Stegner told a story to the class about getting a letter from a farmer in Saskatchewan where Wally had grown up, who was quarreling with Wally because he had named a piece of farm machinery and had the wrong machine doing the task he was writing about. And Wally said to us, said, I let that farmer down, and it doesn't matter if There are only 10 people in the world who know that I made that mistake. I owe every reader the willful suspension of disbelief. And for that farmer, it couldn't happen because he knew I got it wrong.

[Charlie Gibson]

Did you read Perry Mason books as a kid?

[Scott Turow]

I read him. I watched Perry Mason, though Perry Mason, when I was, like 10 years old, was like, A highlight of the week, and it was on CBS on Saturday nights, and I never missed it. Eventually, I got old enough to wonder how Hamilton Berger could get reelected without ever winning a case.

[Kate]

But, Scott Thoreau, thank you so much for joining us. The book is Presumed Guilty.

[Scott Turow]

Thank you both. It's been a great talk.

[Charlie Gibson]

You know, one of the other lines, Kate, in the book that really struck me, he writes, defending an innocent accused person is harder than defending somebody who's guilty. And I understand what he means by that, because I think probably in the defense attorney's mind, probably there's more at stake if he's convicted. Of course, in many cases, the defense attorney probably doesn't want to find out doubt if his client is guilty or not. But the fact that he writes that defending an innocent client is tougher. I thought that was really interesting. We didn't get a chance to talk about that, but we talked about plenty of other things.

[Kate]

No, I would imagine that those are the ones that keep you up at night. And I think, you know, we talked to James Comey when he wrote a courtroom procedural, and he talked about, you know, it's harder to remember everything you get right, but, man, what keeps you up at night is the stuff that went wrong. So, you know, Scott gave me a whole new sympathy for defense attorneys, especially defense attorneys who know their clients are innocent.

[Charlie Gibson]

Yeah, defense attorneys, people who, in a position like James Comey was, they take it very seriously and they realize that lives really are at stake. I remember Comey saying the highest moment of his time as head of the FBI was when they were looking for somebody who was a child abuser, and somebody walked in and said, chief, we got him. And he said it was just. It made everything all worthwhile. Anyway, a couple of things. We haven't had a bookcase in a couple of weeks. A bookstore owner, I should say. We're the bookcase. We haven't had a bookstore owner in a while. And we will get on that. I've been traveling and I apologize. I've done a lousy job in. In getting some bookstores. We will get on that right away. A number of you have written in saying you miss it. We have a coda from Scott Turow, and it's an interesting one. It's the last few lines of his book Presumed Guilty, and it sums up, really where Rusty Savage feels as the age of 77, where he is in his life. I thought it was a wonderful summation at the end of his book. So Kate will tell you who's responsible for working on this podcast and then Dakota from Scott Turow.

[Kate]

The Bookcase with Kate and Charlie Gibson is a production of ABC Audio and Good Morning America. It is edited by Tom Butler of TKO Productions. Our executive producers are Laura Mayer and Simone Swink. We want to make mention of Taylor Rhodes, Amanda McMaster and Sarah Russell at Good Morning America and Josh Cohen, Asal Asanapour, Meg Fierro and Amirah Williams at ABC Audio.

[Scott Turow]

So yes, BNI will move on, but I will go with no regrets or second thoughts about my decade and a half out here in Skagen. Within the profound silence of the country, I have, like Aaron, come to feel more of myself. I've healed, loved well and been loved. Known regrets, some deep. But best learn to live as I will live now in the time I have with gratitude.

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