In an interview with the Evening News of Sault Ste Marie, Michigan on June 27, 2012, mystery writer Steve Hamilton talked about his reasons for setting the Alex McKnight mysteries in the eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan:
EN: You keep coming back to the EUP in your Alex McKnight books. What is it about this area that draws you?
SH: There’s a reason why he stays there, because it feels like home to him. I travel all over the place and I ask people if they’ve ever been to the U.P., and if it’s outside of Michigan only a handful of people raise their hand. Everything’s different’s there. The air is different, the people are different. There’s a dark beauty to it. It’s not an easy kind of beauty, definitely not in the winter. Even in the summer, you know it’s not going to last long and that’s sort of heartbreaking. You can draw a bigger parallel about how you live your life. In the U.P., that’s how it feels — that amazing, beautiful summer day, you only get a few of those.
Read the full interview here.
Thanks to James Old, professor of political science and editor of The Cresset at Valparaiso University, for drawing my attention to this interview.
