Indiana as Setting by Sheila Webster Boneham

LUCY BURDETTE: First thing today, we would like to pause for a moment to celebrate and give thanks to all our veterans...

And then I am delighted to introduce you to someone new to Jungle Red, Sheila Webster Boneham, who writes the "Animals in Focus" mystery series. How could I resist an author with an Aussie on her book cover and in her author photo? Welcome Sheila!

SHEILA WEBSTER BONEHAM: Setting is an essential element of many works of fiction. Some settings are important enough to be regarded as "characters" of a sort – Tony Hillerman’s Four Corners area of the Southwest, for instance, or Carl Hiassen’s Florida – and the players and plots depend in large part on place. The stories just wouldn’t work as well anywhere else.

 In my own Animals in Focus mystery series, 50-something animal photographer Janet MacPhail, her Australian Shepherd Jay, and her orange tabby Leo, spend most of their time in and around Fort Wayne and other parts of northern Indiana. I chose the area partly because I grew up there and know it well, and partly because it is a beautiful part of the country that often gets short shrift from outsiders who think the whole state (or perhaps the entire Midwest?) is just flat farmland merging into the industrial landscape just east of Chicago. Indiana certainly has its share of corn and beans, hogs and factories, but the state is also rich in lakes, rivers, forests, hills, and ravines as well as bustling cities, small towns, and occasional quirky attractions. Janet’s career and her hobby—training and competing in dog and cat (yes, cat!) sports—both take her to a variety of locations, from fairgrounds to lakes and rivers to rolling pastures and wild wooded ravines.

Take Janet’s stomping grounds in and around Fort Wayne. The city is set at the confluence of the St. Joseph and St. Marys rivers, which join forces to flow east and then north to Lake Erie as the Maumee. Historically, this was the site of a sprawling Miami Indian village known as Kekionga (“blackberry bush”)—my junior high school was named for the village. Modern Fort Wayne straddles the rivers, with Main Street practically running into the point where the rivers meet. This is, in fact, an area prone to flooding, and some time ago the city began buying up property along the rivers, eventually creating well-used parks that accommodate a lot of overflow from the occasional deluge. In dryer times, the parks are well used for walking, jogging, bicycling,  and fishing.

One of my favorite places in Fort Wayne is the Rivergreenway, a 25-mile multi-use trail along the rivers. When I lived there, I spent many a happy hour riding my bike or walking, with or without my dogs, along various sections of the trail. It’s no mystery, then, why my fictional friend Janet does the same. She and her Australian Shepherd, Jay, even wrestle with a corpse on the trail in Drop Dead on Recall (although I won’t say what kind of corpse!).

A short drive north and west of Fort Wayne we find ourselves in lake country, and I can’t resist including some of the lakes and rivers in the books just for a chance to use their musical names—Maxinkuckee, Winona, Manitou, Wawasee. And of course the big lake—Michigan—with some forty miles of Indiana shoreline. Fifteen of those miles border the 15,000 acres of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, whose forty-five miles of trails pass through dunes, wetlands, prairies, and forests. If that’s not enough, Indiana Dunes State Park offers more opportunities to enjoy the wildlife and natural landscape of this beautiful area. I’m sure Janet will get there one of these books!

If you’re in the mood for something a more rugged, a three-hour drive to the southwest will land you in Turkey Run and Shades state parks in the west-central part of Indiana. Ancient glaciers carved deep ravines into this landscape, which is rich with gorgeous rock formations and varied flora and fauna. Shades also protects one of the last remaining virgin hardwood forests in the region. If you hike these trails, be sure to wear your slip-proof shoes or boots, and be ready for a workout, and for some gorgeous scenery and wildlife sightings.

Drive farther south and you’ll find yourself in hilly country famous for its construction-quality limestone (think Empire State Building, Washington National Cathedral, Pentagon…. the list is long), the 202,000-acre Hoosier National Forest, the Indiana University campus in Bloomington, beautiful hill-country state parks like Brown County and McCormick’s Creek (which is my favorite). And as long as we’re headed south, don’t miss Clifty Falls and Falls of the Ohio, where Lewis and Clark met to begin their expedition.

In the first four books of my series, Janet and friends have stayed within day-trip distance of home, but who knows? There are so many stunning places in Indiana to hike with dogs and to photograph wildlife, they could find themselves almost anywhere in the future. 

What mysteries (or other novels) have introduced you to a new setting or given you new insights into one you thought you knew?

Shepherd's Crook, Animals in Focus Mystery #4

 Animal photographer Janet MacPhail has just arrived at a sheep-herding competition with her Australian Shepherd, Jay, when she learns that a flock of sheep has disappeared. Police think the animals have wandered off in search of greener grass, but Janet sees and hears things that convince her the sheep's owners are right—the animals have been stolen. Janet knows she should leave the snooping to the police while she attends to her own problems—new living arrangements, her mom's wedding plans, puppy and kitten antics, and extremists bent on keeping people from having pets. But when a livestock handler turns up dead and the sheep's owner disappears, the police and a pair of thugs pay Janet way more attention than she likes. She sets out to find answers, putting herself and those she loves in the killer's crosshairs.

Sheila Webster Boneham writes the Animals in Focus mystery series. Best-seller Drop Dead on Recall, the first in the series, was an NBC Petside Top Ten Dog book of 2012 and won the 2013 Maxwell Award for Fiction from the Dog Writers Association of America. The Moneybird was a Maxwell finalist in 2014. Sheila has been involved with many sides of the animal world and has written seventeen nonfiction books about dogs and cats, six of which have won major awards. You can find Sheila at sheilaboneham.com, or at her Writers & Other Animals blog at writersandotheranimals.blogspot.com, or on Facebook. Sheila’s books are available at all the usual places, and autographed copies can be ordered here. 

Tonka slipped this in...did someone say "Australian shepherds?"