When I first started reading this book, I wasn't sure what the setting was. I figured that Roofing was in outstate Minnesota somewhere and their travels confirm this impression. Enger was born and raised in Minnesota so he knows this place well. Half of all Minnesotas live in the Twin Cities metro area so anyplace that is outside the metro area is called "outstate." There is often some tension between these parties, claiming that more money is spent on the metro area, etc. My parents come from the southeast corner of North Dakota, right on the Minnesota border, and I now live in Minnesota, so it's easy for me to envision this setting.
One of the things that confused me initially was the time period. It is finally fully confirmed in this section as 1963. I would have been 10 years old at the time. Towns are far apart and traveling in a gas guzzling car at that time could easily have been a huge problem. I myself have driven into a gas station running on fumes because I didn't stop one town earlier.
Once again the place and time really resonate with me. I know how cold and miserable it can be. I've traveled through North Dakota many times, in all seasons, and if it's not too cold, it's too hot and muggy and buggy. You really can't imagine how flat the landscape is if you haven't been through it. The reason that the flooding Red River is so devastating is because of the flat land. Once it leaves the bank the water has miles and miles of completely flat land to spread out. That's why the Badlands are so dramatic. They are really gorgeous, very colorful and interesting to look at. Their history as a hiding place for Native Americans and outlaws alike would have fascinated Swede. It's a natural, but also dangerous place for someone on the run to hide.
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I grew up in Utah, and now live in northern Arizona (which is quite mountainous - I live at an elevation 7000 ft above sea level). The furthest east I've traveled is Denver, CO. I'm sorry to admit my pitiful traveling experience. For some reason, it's just never been in the cards for me to see much of the world as of yet, but I do have some goals made to travel when the timing is right (and the children are old enough to stay with relatives at the very least).
That said, it will come as no surprise that I've never really ever seen flat country. Even Nevada and California, and up through Idaho into Washington (the extent of my travels to visit family and go on vacations) has extremely varied topography. The only time I've seen flat land like it is described in the book is through movies and pictures. The way that Enger describes the landscape, however, makes me feel like I am right there with them even though I've never physically seen such a landscape. He has a very vivid way of describing that I enjoy.
I don't always think of the setting as just the landscape, it reflects the time period as well, and Swede illustrates this point fully when she starts talking in her stories about outlaws and heroes and the West, capital W, and you can believe that she's being transported from drab, dull Minnesota where she's grown up into the prairies where horses and cowboys can gallop free. As well as leaving her home, she is leaving behind her time as she travels, while Reuben, and probably his father, concentrate more on things like when the next town comes, so that they can fill up in these rural areas where a gas station may not come for how many miles. I've traveled a bit, not in the areas of this book, but in Europe, Japan, and various parts of the country, and flat land drives me bonkers. I grew up in mountains, and if nothing else, when you don't feel like reading or sleeping in the car there are things to look at. Flat land is somehow so much more tiring, because it seems like it never ends. Even in my home state of New Mexico I've seen the mountains, the desert, and the flat, barren wastelands that to me sound very much like badlands, though not in the same sense as the ones in the Dakotas. I know the ones there only from books, because the ones in Montana are rife with dinosaur fossils and I went through a paleontology phase. I know through that that they are windswept and barren, and the topography changes continually. Ideal for outlaws, but also deadly for the unprepared.
I agree that time period is also a wonderful way to set the setting of a story. I love to read books written in an earlier day than ours because they take me to a world I have never known. What would it have been like to be a governess like Jane Eyre or a wild child on the moors like Catherine Earnshaw? I'll never know. But, by reading those novels, I can escape into that world just a little bit and feel what it might have been like. Similar to books written in an alternative time line or in the future.
Ah...just reread what I wrote and I need to clarify. I meant that time period creates the similar setting for alternative time lines and futuristic settings. The time of the event is just as important in setting as the location of the event. So, thanks for bringing that aspect of setting up, Angela. :)
I love the insight that you all have provided. The circumstances and settings of this book are really fun to read about. I've heard a lot of good things about Minnesota and would love to visit it sometime (though not in winter), and it's fun to hear Debra's thoughts on it as well as North Dakota (which I know practically nothing about).
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