I read Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson in high school and today it remains one of the most profound, emotional collections of short stories I’ve read to date. This haunting portrayal of small-town life taught me how much impact richly drawn characters have on a reader.

If I could choose a book to read again for the very first time it would be Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. When you close a book and realize that you desperately miss the characters and can’t stand not knowing what has become of them, you know it is a very special novel. Betty Smith had a way of writing and talking to the reader in such a way that I found myself saying, “Yes, that is exactly how it is!” There is such a truth to her stories, a turn of phrase that leaves you nodding your head.

Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible was one of the first novels I remember reading that was written in multiple points of view. I was amazed at how brilliantly Kingsolver was able to tell such a complex, heart-wrenching tale through the eyes of the Price women. Though I didn’t know it at the time I read The Poisonwood Bible, it set the stage for my exploration into writing many of my novels in multiple perspectives.

Willa Cather’s My Ántonia is my favorite novel of all time. The story is of an immigrant, Antonia Shimerda (my maiden name is Schmida) and her family’s new life in a small frontier town. I love how Cather was able to perfectly depict time and place through her stunning descriptions of the heartland. I think this is why I spend so much effort in developing a sense of setting in my own novels. I read My Ántonia every single year and have been collecting multiple editions over the years to add to my collection.

All of your books have been set in Iowa. What is it about this region that you feel makes it good fodder for storytelling?

A picturesque college town surrounded by craggy bluffs and thick woods; a renovated bookstore settled near the banks of the rushing Druid River; a close-knit farming community; a large Midwestern city; a remote cabin on Five Mines River. These are just a few of the Iowa-inspired settings in my novels. Fictional accounts? True! Fictional locations? Not quite.

I’ve lived in Iowa since I was a young child, and in each of my books I have included meaningful real-life locations into my fictional settings. From my first novel, The Weight of Silence, where the forest is based on my favorite hiking spot, to my most recent novel, Before She Was Found, which borrows the feel of local small rural railroad towns, I never tire of writing about this beautiful, varied landscape.