D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
April
2008
Literary Landscapes
Bestselling mystery writer Michael McGarrity headlines Silver City's April 5 celebration of literacy and local color.
By David A. Fryxell
Michael McGarrity says he and fellow bestselling New Mexico mystery writer Tony Hillerman have an agreement: "I stay away from Navajo land, but the rest of the state is mine."
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Author Michael McGarrity speaks at "Literacy
Alive" on April 5. |
So McGarrity's continuing character, Kevin Kerney — a police officer just as McGarrity himself was at one point — has roamed most of New Mexico, solving mysteries in 11 novels to date. Number 12, Dead or Alive, will be published in January 2009. Although McGarrity lives in Santa Fe and his hero is a once-and-future Santa Fe cop, Kerney's 1996 debut in Tularosa was set closer to our corner of the state, in the Tularosa basin, White Sands Missile Range and Las Cruces. The followup to that Anthony-award-nominated debut, Mexican Hat, took Kerney to the Gila National Forest and Silver City.
This month, Kerney's creator will be coming to Silver City himself to headline the second annual Literacy Alive day, Saturday, April 5 at the Silco Theater, sponsored by the Friends of the Library (FOL). In addition to celebrating literacy, McGarrity and a panel of area authors will discuss the state as a setting, exploring the theme of "Writing New Mexico, Geography, Culture and History."
Joining McGarrity as well as giving a talk of her own will be Las Cruces thriller and romance author Linda Jacobs (see Desert Exposure, June and October 2006). Jacobs' book Rain of Fire was a finalist for the 2007 Willa Award, and she'll be heading to Albuquerque on April 11 to accept the New Mexico Press Women's 2008 best-novel award for Lake of Fire, the latest in her series set in Yellowstone. Also on the panel will be Silver City writers Jack Warner, whose novel Shikar (see the June 2003 Desert Exposure) was recently released in paperback as Maneater and adapted by the Sci-Fi Channel, and Mary Lynn, author of romance novels and writing how-to books. Lynn's husband, Ted Lynn, a widely published freelance writer, will emcee the Literacy Alive event.
The next generation of local writers will also be honored in an awards presentation for middle- and high-school student entrants in a writing contest sponsored by the FOL. Younger book-lovers will have a parallel program at the Public Library featuring books by New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya.
Signing on to promote literacy was a natural for McGarrity, who is donating his speaking fee to the Hillerman-McGarrity Creative Writing Scholarship at the College of Santa Fe. "This will be maybe my 40th library-related event across the US," he says. "Libraries and bookmobiles played such a important part in my own development."
Growing up a "country boy" before the TV generation, McGarrity says both his parents were big on reading. "My mother especially passed on a love of books to me. I was reading before I started school, which was a good thing since I was a bit of a hellraiser as a lad and didn't do well in school. But I got a liberal education from books.
"I tell people today that if you look around, you'll still find that rural people are often dedicated readers," he goes on. "On my book tours, I meet readers who are cowboys or farmers, people who live more isolated lives, who want to meet me and say they enjoy my work. Reading remains a living part of the modern West."
McGarrity's own early favorites in the library included C.S. Forester's "Horatio Hornblower" naval adventures — "even though I can't swim worth a damn" — and nonfiction books by J. Frank Dobie about the open-range days of Texas. "I also read a lot of biography," McGarrity adds. "I remember especially The Stargazer, a fictionalized biography of Galileo. I finally found a copy about a dozen years ago."
Growing up as a reader of books doesn't necessarily make one a writer of books, but McGarrity says, "There's always that thought somewhere in the back of your mind that you might want to write a book. It comes with the territory, that one of these days you might give it a shot. And here I am making a living as a full-time writer."
Not that the arc of McGarrity's life and career aimed inexorably toward literary success. In college, he studied psychology and earned a Ford Foundation scholarship at the University of New Mexico, followed by a master's in clinical social work. He also attended the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy.
As a psychotherapist and social worker, McGarrity was responsible for reestablishing mental health services for the New Mexico Corrections Department after the infamous prison riot of 1980. That same year he was recognized by his peers as the New Mexico Social Worker of the Year. He later maintained a private practice specializing in family therapy and consultation services to community-based treatment agencies.
As a deputy sheriff for Santa Fe County, he worked as a patrol officer, community relations officer and training and planning supervisor. He established the county's sex-crimes unit, for which he served as lead investigator. He taught at the law-enforcement academy and served as an investigator and caseworker for the Public Defender's Office. In 1987, McGarrity was honored as Santa Fe's Police Officer of the Year.
But always there was that thought in the back of his mind about books and writing. He'd written journal articles but never fiction until trying his hand at his first mystery, Tularosa. It was an instant success, named by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of 1996. McGarrity went on to write a string of bestsellers and award-winning mysteries: Serpent Gate, his third novel, was named a top 10 bestseller in 2001 by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. He's a multiple-nominee for the Western Writers of America Spur Award, and in 2004 won the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts for literature.
From the first, McGarrity says, his novels have been deeply grounded in the landscape and culture of New Mexico. "If it's authentic, that sense of place helps define the characters — the language they use, the names they carry, their values and belief systems," he explains.
On his Web site (www.michaelmcgarrity.com), McGarrity describes the relationship between his setting and his hero: "When I developed the character of Kevin Kerney, I wanted to put on the page a fully drawn individual who would run counter to the trend of quirky or emotionally damaged protagonists in mystery fiction. Kerney carries his scars and emotional baggage well, and has a strong moral fiber which rarely takes him over the edge. He is a man who knows the difference between right and wrong and practices his profession with a sense of ethics, responsibility, and pride. While he's strong-willed and persistent, he is neither overly macho or flashy.
"Born on a ranch in the Tularosa Basin in south central New Mexico, Kerney has long dreamt of returning to his roots, which was taken away from his parents when the military expanded White Sands Missile Range, a high-security weapons testing facility."
McGarrity picks up from there: "Kerney does have a history that includes a sense of loss. We've all lost something or somebody or something of ourselves. He has lost this place, and is searching to find a way to possibly return."
McGarrity was already familiar with the troubled history of the missile range and ranchers whose land was appropriated, and put Kerney into that picture — literally, toting a gun in a showdown with authorities — as part of the character's backstory. "I knew the area very well from having spent time there in the 1950s and 1960s," he adds, "and I was stationed at White Sands awhile when I was in the service."
The events in Tularosa do bring Kerney back to his family's former ranch — though, of course, being a murder mystery, it's not exactly a happy homecoming.
"Part of what I wanted to try to write about was the viable ranching tradition that still exists in New Mexico, that people in urban centers rarely see," says McGarrity. "Kerney bridges two worlds — that of the rancher-cowboy and that of the modern policeman. Being a modern policeman in New Mexico, his cases emphasize the differences between rural or small communities and the big-city, urban crime stories that are so frequently written about. Western and rural police work is significantly different than what you see in crime shows."
McGarrity set his next book, Mexican Hat in the Gila about the time Catron County was making headlines for a law requiring citizens to bear arms, he recalls. "So I had that vision in my mind." He already knew this area, too, but says, "I always do fresh research. I took my camera and my four-wheel-drive and went to get the scene in my head, to capture it and bring it home."
He confesses that the image of Silver City in the book, though not necessarily unflattering, "is not always what the Chamber of Commerce wants to put out as an image of the city."
Emphasizing the importance of place to McGarrity's novel, each includes a map crafted by his son, Sean Eli. Subsequent books have been set in Mountainair, the Las Vegas valley, Alamogordo, Ruidoso, Lincoln County, Socorro, the Jornada del Muerto, Taos, Galisteo and of course Santa Fe. Nothing But Trouble, published in 2006, takes Kerney back to the Southwest corner of the state on a working vacation as a technical advisor on a contemporary Western movie being shot in the Bootheel — where, naturally, there's a murder. McGarrity's Web site includes background information on each locale and links to learn more (including, yes, a link to the Silver City-Grant County Chamber of Commerce).
The most recent Kerney mystery, Death Song, reunites the character — now police chief in Santa Fe — with his Mescalero Apache son, Clayton Istee. Fans might wonder whether, since Kerney is set to retire as the novel opens, McGarrity plans to turn the spotlight of his mysteries over to the character of Clayton — who also happens to be a police sergeant. Though he describes the introduction of the half-Apache character as "brilliant on my part," McGarrity isn't spilling any beans about his next book, which is half-written and due to his publisher at the end of June.
He has no interest in launching a second mysteries series, unconnected to the Kerney books, however. If McGarrity ever gets around to writing something different, he says it will probably be a stand-alone book, not necessarily a mystery.
In the meantime, he still has a lot of the state of New Mexico to explore in his novels — all that geography not claimed by his friend Tony Hillerman.
The Friends of the Library's 2nd Annual Literacy Alive Day, on the theme of "Writing New Mexico, Geography, Culture and History," will be Saturday, April 5, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Silco Theater on Bullard Street in downtown Silver City. Schedule: 9:15 a.m. student awards ceremony; 10:15 a.m. keynote address by Michael McGarrity; 1 p.m. panel discussion with McGarrity, Linda Jacobs, Mary Lynn, Jack Warner; 2:15 p.m. talk by Linda Jacobs; 3 p.m. book signing. Tickets, available at the door, at the Public Library, or from Friends of the Library, Box 5098, Silver City, NM 88062, are $8, $6 FOL members, $6 students/seniors, 12 and under free. A free Literacy Alive Day Children's Program will be held 10:30 a.m.-1 p.m. at the Public Library, featuring books by New Mexico author Rudolfo Anaya. For more information, call 538-3672.