When Sean Doolittle wrote his first two suspense novels, he set them in Los Angeles. He figured, that’s where suspense novels are usually set.
“I thought you had to write about someplace glitzier than Nebraska.”
When Doolittle, who grew up outside of Lincoln, decided to set 2005’s “Rain Dogs” in Nebraska’s Sand Hills, he was surprised by how many people — reviewers and industry types — noticed. They thought Nebraska was an exotic locale.
That’s the beauty of setting your novel in Nebraska, many writers said. It’s largely uncovered ground. There are plenty of untold stories here and plenty of unused locations.
All of Timothy Schaffert’s books take place in Nebraska. But like Doolittle, Schaffert didn’t realize at first that that was allowed. The book that opened his mind was “A Lost Lady” by Willa Cather.
“I remember it mentioning places that I knew — and that affected me profoundly. I hadn’t thought until that point that I could write about the place where I lived.”
Jonis Agee, another literary fiction writer, agreed: “I feel like I grew up a blind person. I knew I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t know that this was my material.”
Agee, an Omaha native who teaches writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is working on her third book set in the Sand Hills. Nebraska has become vital to her life as an author, she says.
“I feel like I’ve tasted other places, but I’m the sort of person who needs this kind of sky — the bigness and maybe the emptiness — to work.”
That empty sky is more forboding if you didn’t grow up under it.
Omaha author John Rector is from Colorado, but set “The Grove” in Nebraska because it suits his genre — suspense.
“As an outsider coming to Nebraska, it’s a pretty grim state, especially in winter.” The big dome sky, the flatness, the fact that it’s gray so much of the year. “It’s kind of easy to imagine grim characters and grim plots in such a desolate state.”
For Kim Louise, who writes African American romances (“Sweet Like Honey” is her latest), getting Omaha into her books is a way to put Nebraska out there. To let people know that we’re here, all kinds of us. “If I travel, the first comment I hear is, ‘There are black people in Nebraska?’ ”
Nebraska finds its way into Nebraskans’ books, even when it’s uncredited.
“I rarely am direct about it, naming it,” said Robert Reed, a Hugo Award-winning science fiction author who lives in Lincoln. Reed couldn’t even guess how many of his 12 science-fiction novels and more than 200 short stories have taken place in Nebraska.
It’s just where his brain goes, location-wise ... when he isn’t setting things in outer space, that is.
“I don’t think I could pull off Toronto.”
Contact the writer:
402-444-1149, rainbow.rowell@owh.com
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