Location, Location, Location

by Carolyn Haines, @DeltaGalCarolyn

In real estate, the old saw is that location is everything. For me, the same is almost always true in fiction. My reading and writing preference is that the characters are either organic to the setting, or they are fish out of water. Either choice provides the reader with a unique view of the story’s setting.

Growing up in Mississippi, I’m well aware of the rich heritage of writers from my home state. Eudora Welty, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams—they have imprinted an image of Mississippi on multiple generations of readers and writers. My experiences were very different. I grew up during the turmoil of the 60s and 70s. My parents were journalists who believed in civil rights at a time when that wasn’t the most popular stance. So I grew up loving the incredible woods and creeks of a state blessed with natural beauty, but saddened by the willful ignorance and sometimes the pure damn meanness. It is this rich diversity that makes Mississippi such a perfect setting for novels: the very poor and very wealthy, the pine barrens and sandy beaches of the Gulf, the good-hearted and kind, and those who are not. I grew up knowing all of it. And all of it comes out in the characters I write about.

I worked as a journalist for ten years before seriously pursuing fiction writing. As a journalist, I traveled and worked in a large part of the South. And I’ve read almost every Southern writer who’s penned a novel.

Today, almost all of my books are set in the South, primarily in Mississippi and Alabama, where I now live and teach at a university. This setting is part of my blood and bone. And the same is true for the characters I create. It is Sarah Booth Delaney’s love of Dahlia House, surrounded by the vista of cotton fields, that brings her home from New York and puts her in a place where she steals her friend’s dog and ransoms it back to obtain the money to keep Dahlia House from being sold for taxes. When Tinkie Bellcase Richmond (a true Daddy’s Girl who can twist a man around her little finger with the bat of her eyelashes—and let me just add that no region produces a Daddy’s Girl like the Delta. They are in their own league!) hires Sarah Booth to pay the ransom for the dog, which Sarah Booth has dognapped, this bumpy start ends with Sarah Booth and Tinkie in partnership in a private eye agency. They find their skills and personalities, though very different, are the perfect complement.

No other region could produce Sarah Booth or Tinkie in quite the same way. These are characters who grow organically from the setting around them. Sarah Booth has often been compared to Evanovich’s New Jersey bounty hunter, Stephanie Plum. The similarities are in the humor and the fact that Stephanie springs from the New Jersey setting full blown. In the South, we would say, “She’s a product of her raisin’.” And so is Sarah Booth. The particular issues of Mississippi history, socio-economics, and class have forged her and tested her. While the books are humorous in tone, the issues can take on a slightly dark edge.

Sarah Booth has one thing the New Jersey bounty hunter doesn’t—Jitty the ghost. Jitty hails from the Civil War era, where she was a slave who served as nanny for Sarah Booth’s great-great-great-grandmother Alice. The two women lost their husbands in the war, and they survived the devastation of the South by working together. That friendship is the basis for Jitty’s return to Dahlia House from the Great Beyond to pester, torment, prod, and protect Sarah Booth. Though she is dead, Jitty is no one to mess with.

BONE TO BE WILD is the 15^th book in the series and involves my favorite musical form. The blues are part of the heritage of this triangle of rich topsoil called the Delta. They were born in the cotton fields as slaves worked and sang. The blues incorporate field hollers, stomps and shouts, spirituals, ballads, and lyrics that speak of the daily sorrows and joys of men and women who lived, loved, and lost under harsh conditions.

When Scott Hampton takes over a blues club at a crossroads, he begins to receive threatening messages urging him to pack it up and leave. One evening the club’s bartender is gunned down and Sarah Booth and Tinkie must find the murderer before he/she kills again. It’s an action packed story that includes the regular Zinnia cast—and a bit of romance for Cece, the society editor of the local newspaper and Sarah Booth’s friend.

These characters grew from the alluvial soil of the Mississippi River. I couldn’t have imagined them anywhere else. The Delta is not my home, but it’s a part of the world I love very much. I hope you’ll come for a visit, even it it’s only between the pages of a book.

Carolyn Haines is the author of the Sarah Booth Delaney Mississippi Delta mystery series. BONE TO BE WILD is the 15th book in the series. Haines has been an avid mystery fan all of her life, both as a reader and writer. She’s been awarded the Harper Lee Award for Distinguished Writing and the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence. She runs a small 501c3 animal rescue, Good Fortune Farm Refuge, which rehabilitates and rehomes a small number of horses, dogs, and cats each year. Haines urges all pet owners to spay and neuter and to adopt from shelters. For more information, go to www.carolynhaines.com to sign up for her newsletter.  Or you can join her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.