Setting and Social Issues

Yesterday in her post, Donis wrote, "Setting is important to characterization." I've been thinking about that because of a brief conversation that I had with a colleague a couple of days ago. She was talking with a group of other people and as she saw me walking by, she paused to tell me she had finished reading all five of my Lizzie Stuart novels and the two Hannah McCabe novels set in Albany. I was pleased when she said she'd enjoyed all the books -- and surprised when she said the fifth book in the Lizzie Stuart's series, Forty Acres in a Soggy Grave, had been her favorite.

If I had been asked, I would have suspected that the fourth book, You Should Have Died on Monday, would be the one most readers liked best. That book had an interesting cover, introduced Lizzie's mother, the femme fatale, moved from Chicago to New Orleans. That book got great reviews. The fifth book came out with little fanfare. I was worried that I might have offended folks on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. In the book, I'd use the real name of the location because it would have been obvious and because it was crucial to the book -- a barrier island, wildlife, farms, migrant labor, agribusiness, pollution, land-use issues.

I knew after my first visit that I wanted to set a book there. I loved Eastern Shore. I went back again as I was writing and spent another week at a bed and breakfast to make sure I was highlighting what made the peninsula unique. But the plot of my mystery was inspired by a  newspaper headline that I'd discovered from 2004, the year (in the recent past of my series) that the book was set. Starting there was probably not the best way to highlight the beauty of the setting.

In retrospect, after the book was published, I feared that I had gone too dark. Yesterday, I flipped through the book again, reading the last few chapters. I'll need to read it all in a couple of months when my editor at Speaking Volumes prepares the manuscript for the reissue. But I was curious about whether I had short-changed this literary child of mine. I think I did. It received fewer Amazon reviews than the other books in the series, but the reviewers generally liked the book. What they liked was the characterizations and the relationships.

This time around, I'm going to send Forty Acres out into the world with a hug and pave its way. I couldn't have written any other story. Setting and characters came together, and the clash was disconcerting, but important to the series. The ending was satisfying for me, and for the readers who understood it was the completion of a series arc that had begun four books earlier. Now, as I move on to the next book, the characters are in a different place in their lives.

Next stop, Santa Fe -- and that setting, too, is crucial.