When filmmaker Debra Granik received a copy of Winter's Bone, Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel about a broken family in the Ozarks, she knew immediately that she wanted to adapt it for the big screen.

Granik and writer-producer Anne Rosellini had been looking for a strong female protagonist for a long time; they wanted someone "that we could just enjoy, and who we could recognize very readily as someone who would shine out on screen," Granik tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "This was a very irresistible book to us, and the story was one that would adapt very well the way that Daniel had constructed it."

Both Granik and Woodrell sat down to discuss the meth-fueled family drama, which won the 2010 Sundance Grand Jury Prize and which Fresh Air critic David Edelstein called "miraculous."

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