When I wrote “Broken Promises”, I intended to move Hazel Whitmore from the city to the country. It took an entire book to accomplish this. So I ended up writing “Old Promises”.
The Setting
Although I’ve seen every contiguous state and lived in several of them, I’ve lived in the rural Missouri Ozarks for thirty years. Following the dictum ‘write what you know’, I moved Hazel to the Missouri Ozarks. This covers a lot of territory.
Crooked Creek is a fictitious town modeled on two or three towns I’ve lived near. The residents are drawn from people I’ve known in these towns, although only one is true to the person.
The land Hazel moves to is modeled after a place we looked at when we moved here. It wasn’t suitable for our life style, but works well for Hazel’s.
My imagination dreamed up the house. I’ve been in buildings filled with dust and dirt along with cobwebs. These were a bit exaggerated for the novel.
The setting was essential for writing “Old Promises”, even needing a bit of a map.
City to Country
There are so many adjustments for someone moving from the city, if they want to be part of the country life for real. Some of them are a big shock.
For me, seeing the horizon was amazing as smog hid it near Los Angeles. And my father’s place was flooded in three days after I got there, something I’d only seen on TV.
Hazel’s world is a bit different. Her new house is hidden behind a hill so there is no cell service. Internet service is slow once her mother can afford to have it put in. Town is miles away.
Hazel’s school is a small kindergarten to eighth grade. The students have known each other all their lives. She is not only new, but a stranger, a foreigner and resented by relatives she has never met or known of before.
Sink or Swim
Although the plot revolves around an old family feud, the real story is Hazel trying to understand and adjust to a way of life undreamed of by those living in cities. In some ways, that way of life will never be understood by the city transplant. That is something I understand even after thirty years living in the Ozarks and helped me in writing “Old Promises”.