Nevada Barr

Nevada Barr is an award-winning novelist and New York Times best-selling author. She has a growing number of Anna Pigeon mysteries to her credit--the latest, The Rope, is set in the Glen Canyon National Recreational Area--as well as numerous other books, short stories, and articles.

From her Q & A with Randy Dotinga at the Christian Science Monitor:

Q: What made you think of sticking Anna into a hole in the middle of nowhere?

A: I was inspired by the actual "solution holes" that I saw for the first time at Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. There are hundreds and hundreds of them. They are so cool, and I wanted to make Anna really helpless. I wanted to crash her into the wilderness before she was Anna Pigeon.

Q: Why are they called solution holes?

A. There was some stuff in the ground that was softer than the sandstone. As water seeped in, it melted into a solution, like pouring a drop of water into a bowl of sugar. It just liquified and leeched away, leaving a hole.

Q: Lake Powell, the humongous reservoir where the action takes place, turns out to be quite an amazing place. And it was 600 feet deep in 1995! What drew you to it?

A: It just had all these ingredients of absolute gorgeousness and human disaster.

They build the Glen Canyon Dam, a huge gigantic dam, and basically filled up the Colorado River basin. You've got this weird teal-green lake in...[read on]

See Nevada Barr's 6 favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue