Monday, July 16, 2007

Fiction tourism--in reality

These days, I rarely buy any novels. There is a very large supply at my mother's house now that she has retired from the horse breeding business. Sometime ago, she recommended to me books by the author J. A. Jance. This author features several different individuals--mostly from law enforcement--as her books' main characters. One of these is Sheriff Joanna Brady on Cochise County, Arizona. Having reinstated my "tradition" of travel in the region immediately after the end of each national Autism Society of America conference, I am traveling around in Arizona at the moment. (This year's conference was in Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix).

Today, I visited--and am staying over at the Best Value Inn & Suites--in Bisbee, the location of the sheriff's office (fictionally, at least). Joanna is supposed to have a ranch some two miles outside town.

Bisbee is very different from what I had expected. It is an amazingly beautiful place, especially coming down Highway 80. It turns out that there is an "old" town Bisbee. I never realized that the town was really an old town accompanied by some newer developments.

Here, by the way, we have an interesting series of events. It was only about three months since I first heard of J.A. Jance. If I had not heard of her, I probably would never have ventured to this place.

Now we will have to see what--if anything--happens "by the time I get (back) to Phoenix."

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Congratulations, you stayed at the biggest dive in town. No doubt because it was in your price range. You wouldn't want to spend the extra money and get a slice of the real Bisbee. Anyway, our hotel, in Old Bisbee, is correctly priced based on our great occupancy rate, and we have our own parking lot directly connected to the hotel. Next time you want to publicly trash our town, do your research rookie.

Lars Perner, Ph.D. said...

In retrospect, I regret the comment about the price--which, along with the identity of the specific establishment has been deleted. I hope you do share my appreciation of the irony of a "bed and breakfast" without breakfast. I am all in favor of innovation, and it clearly is an interesting idea. Actually, my impression of Bisbee (which in retrospect was not well reflected in my posts) was actually quite favorable.