Author Nevada Barr has lived a life with almost as many plot twists as her best-selling Anna Pigeon mystery novels.
Barr, 59, left a career as an actress and voice-over specialist to work as a ranger in the United States Park Service. Postings during her eight-year career included the Natchez Trace in Mississippi, the Guadalupe Mountains in Texas and Colorado’s own Mesa Verde.
The Anna Pigeon novels draw on those experiences. The heroine is a ranger who moves from park to park, a different one in each novel. Neither backcountry Miss Marple nor Vibram-soled Nancy Drew, Pigeon is very much her own character.
“The Rope,” 17th in the series and set in the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, hits stores Tuesday.
Barr is slated to appear at the Tattered Cover in LoDo at 7:30 p.m. Thursday. We caught up with the author in a phone call to her New Orleans home.
Q: How did you become a park ranger?
A: I was 37 and making a living as an actress, but really wasn’t going anywhere. I grew interested in the environmental movement and thought that I’d enjoy working as a ranger in the summer and acting in the winter. But I enjoyed the ranger work so much, I was soon totally over acting.
Q: What national park do you enjoy the most?
A: I love the Western parks, but there’s a park for every pursuit and mood. Whether I want to snorkel in the Dry Tortugas or boat on Lake Powell, that’s my favorite at the moment.
Q: How much on-site research do the novels require?
A: I always do the physical legwork. There’s a lot you can read about a place, but that doesn’t convey the smells of the vegetation or how the wind feels. Plus, I always talk to the rangers when I visit because they tell you great stuff. You listen, touch, feel, scratch and sniff.
Q: The Anna Pigeon character is quite resourceful. Do you two have much in common?
A: It’s almost impossible to tell us apart. When you’ve been together as long as Anna and I have, the neurons get all intertwined. She’s stronger than I am, though. Anna isn’t a hero in an elastic cat suit. She’s just stalwart and professional.
Q: Do you have a favorite novel in the series, or is that like asking a parent to pick a favorite child?
A: I don’t have kids but I’ve always felt that parents secretly do have a favorite. I think my first book (“Track of the Cat”) had the best ending. “Superior Death” had the best plot, “Blind Descent” had the best setting, in Carlsbad Caverns. The latest is the scariest. If I ever wrote one that I feel has all the best parts, I’d just retire and admire myself.
Q: Does a recurring protagonist pose a challenge or make it easier on your writing?
A: Both. It’s a challenge because the character develops baggage. They acquire dogs, husbands, wounds. I’ve dragged Anna into middle age, and by the time I get to the 20th book I’ll probably have her with a crotchety voice going, ‘Put down that raccoon, sonny!’ But writing Anna Pigeon is like slipping into an old robe. We’re both so comfortable together.
Q: What’s next?
A: I’m well into the next novel, which comes out next year. It’s set in Acadia National Park in Maine. I’d never been there before. It was one of the few parks I’d missed in my travels, so it was fun to write about.
Q: Some bios say you weren’t named for the state, even though you were born there, but for one of your dad’s favorite fictional heroes.
A: I’ve heard that and probably even said it myself. My dad used to tell me I was named for Nevada Smith, a character in Harold Robbins’ novel “The Carpetbaggers.” Trouble is, that book didn’t come out until nine years after I was born. Here’s the story. My mom was a pilot, and she wouldn’t let non-pilots maintain her plane, because they didn’t know the function of the parts as well.
When she was pregnant with me, same thinking. She wanted a female ob-gyn to deliver me, and found one in Nevada. So I was named for the state. (Laughs.) My dad was quite a storyteller.
William Porter: 303-954-1877 or wporter@denverpost.com
FICTION MYSTERY
fiction mystery
The Rope
by Nevada Barr (Minotaur)
