In this thrilling debut novel, by Michael Bigham, Sheriff Matt Harkness faces a perilous challenge. He isn’t your typical Western sheriff. Cowboy boots make his arches ache, he’s phobic of horses, he drives an old battered pickup and his faithful companion is a wiener dog named Addison. Set on the Oregon High Desert in 1952, life in the small town of Barnesville has been easy-going for Matthew until a star-crossed teen-age couple disappears. Harkness is the keeper of secrets in his little town and to solve the crime, he must decide which secrets to expose. One secret involves Judge Barnes, the county’s most powerful man. But Harkness has a secret of his own: he’s in love with the Judge’s wife. How much is Harkness willing to risk to catch a murderer?
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The Lay of the Land
Landscape in Fiction
by Michael Bigham
There’s a feeling you get driving down to Casper at night from the north, and not only there, other places where you come through hours of darkness unrelieved by lights except the crawling wink of some faraway ranch truck. You come down a grade and all at once the shining town lies below you, slung out like all western towns, and with the curved bulk of the mountain behind it.
Annie Proulx, “A Lonely Coast” from Close Range: Wyoming Stories
If you live out west, you’ve probably driven this stretch of road, maybe not this particular stretch in Wyoming, but perhaps one similar somewhere in Idaho or Colorado. In Central Oregon where I grew up, there’s a ten-mile down grade running from the shoulder of Grizzly Mountain into Prineville. When you crest that rise, the town lights seem so distant.
Annie Proulx is a favorite writer of mine. She creates complex characters and is a master at using landscape in her prose. Whether you’re reading The Shipping News or Brokeback Mountain you can be sure that the landscape will play an important role.
Another of my favs is Flannery O’Connor. Let’s look at A Good Man is Hard to Find:
They turned onto the dirt road and the car raced roughly along in a swirl of pink dust. The grandmother recalled the times when there were no paved roads and thirty miles was a day's journey. The dirt road was hilly and there were sudden washes in it and sharp curves on dangerous embankments. All at once they would be on a hill, looking down over the blue tops of trees for miles around, then the next minute, they would be in a red depression with the dust-coated trees looking down on them.
Here O’Connor uses description of the landscape to foreshadow danger for the story’s characters.
In my own novel, I use the landscape not only to give the reader a sense of place, but also to define my protagonist, Sheriff Matthew Harkness:
The ride up the valley to the North Redmond Ranch was pretty enough in summer or winter, just too long on washboard roads for my taste. I kept the window down and hummed to myself as the countryside drifted by, sagebrush and juniper, up and over the hill out of town, then along wheat and alfalfa fields, faded to brown by August, and up the Paulina Valley. I could buy a few acres up here. Good land, plenty of water, cheap, and undiscovered… so far.
Michael Bigham, Harkness: A High Desert Mystery
Landscape in fiction enhances the reader’s experience and can play a role in character, plotting and creating tension.
You can find Harkness: A High Desert Mystery in both e-book format and in paperback on sale at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Be sure to check out my blog at www.michaelbigham.com
Raised in the mill town of Prineville in Central Oregon beneath blue skies and rimrocks, Michael Bigham attended the University of Oregon and during his collegiate summers, fought range fires on the Oregon high desert for the Bureau of Land Management. He worked as a police officer with the Port of Portland and after leaving police work, obtained an MFA degree in Creative Writing from Vermont College. Michael lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and daughter. Harkness is his first novel.
Visit the author online at www.muskratpress.com and his blog at http://blueparrot.blogspot.com/
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