For 15 years, this was the view from my windows in Newport, Oregon. The soul opens up with a view like this, or anyway mine did, and you think about things: life, youth, character, kismet, bad weather and good fortune. It’s not an easy place. The air itself can weep, and that’s when it’s not raining outright. Or hailing. And it's always windy. You don’t just live on the Oregon coast; you engage it. You read the clouds and the weather and the Coast Guard flags and you duck and cover and wait for a favorable opening.
I’ve moved around the Pacific Northwest since then, and even left it briefly for southern California, but I think my years on the coast gave me my voice. My first two books, Going to Bend and Homesick Creek, were set there, love songs about good people struggling to live meaningful lives in a remote and difficult place.
Hannah’s Dream moves north to the rolling hills and expansive views of the farmlands around Puget Sound, where an elephant and her longtime keeper at a second-rate zoo search for answers to a heart-rending dilemma.
With my most recent book, Seeing Stars, I leave the Northwest entirely (but not permanently) to write about the crazy world of child actors in Hollywood.
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