Are there visual clues that you in-clude to entwine that setting with the story?
I’ve been out hiking with a Navajo before and noticed that he wouldn’t step in the water when crossing a ravine. “It shows respect for the water,” he said, which makes sense in a dry country. I try to remember those elements later on and use them as clues in stories. They might not tell a city cop anything, but they’ll tell Joe Leaphorn something. How have you gone about researching for novels set outside the Southwest? In Finding Moon, for example, I had planned to go to Laos to do research, but I couldn’t get a visa at the time. I could only get as far as Manila, so I modified the plot and went to Palawan Island [between Borneo and the Philippines] and moved a lot of the action there and to Manila. I have sons who are the right age to know a lot of Vietnam veterans, and I imposed on some of them who were in the so-called “Brown-water Navy” [which patrolled the Mekong in these little-bitty boats] and picked their brains. And, I did plenty of reading and sifted through National Geograp
