A Woman of the West

Today’s Western Sheriffs (and the Eastern ones, too) ride into town in trucks in the modern west or a tricked out squad car with a computer at the dashboard. However, just as in the old days, a gun rests on the hip with a star pinned to the shirt. In real life as in J.A. Jance’s novels that Sheriff may well be a woman. In 2022, there were sixty female Sheriffs on duty in the United States.

Although Jance’s books are most often grouped in the “mystery” section of libraries and bookstores, I say, by virtue of her heroine Joanna Brady and Jance’s own immersion in the western landscape and culture exhibited in the books, Jance is definitely a western author. Protagonist Brady is the daughter of a sheriff. Brady becomes sheriff after the murder of  her sheriff husband, and after she solves that, at the same time clearing her husband’s name she is elected on her own. In addition to crime solving, she deals with other modern issues—a mother who thinks a woman’s place is not behind a sheriff’s badge, raising a daughter alone, and the various other issues a strong-minded female in a “man’s job” must face both on the force and in society in general. Issues that are universal, so what gives these books the right to be called “westerns?”

Placement in Bisbee, Cochise County, is just part of it. Yes, Jance herself grew up here, but it is the way she uses the landscape of the place as a character, helping and hindering her in solving the crimes, in seeking solace for her heartaches, credits it (albeit subtly) with imbuing her with the determination and pure grit that help her go on—all of this is pure est. All of this takes me back to the westerns I read as a young teen, where the hero looks to fight for justice, where the west itself becomes such a part of the book that plot, character and landscape were braided together in such a way that I wanted to explore these places that made my hero or heroine. And indeed, I have that same feeling reading Jance, especially in the Joanna Brady series. If you travel to Bisbee, you can see some of the places she notes in the book. If you drive around the county, you  too will be entranced by the landscapes that help make her books  stand out. In addition to being an expert in plot, character, and pacing, Jance knows how to make the landscape a vital part of the story.

Word from others in the community—the library and the others—the photos accompanying this article are from the Cochise County and from Linda Weller—photos like backdrops for the action taking place in Jance’s  books such as the famous Copper Queen Hotel. I could go on and on, but I think that hearing directly from an author, especially one with a practically adroit gift for words, it is better to hear from the author herself....

The Western Writers of America definition of what makes up “western fiction” is that such fiction includes many styles ranging from traditional fiction to historical analysis. Furthermore, the society indicates that their range is broad on style encompassing mysteries, biographies, romance in forms such as to short stories, screenplays, poetry, and songs.

In putting this article together, I made the decision that the best way for you, the reader to get to know Jance herself is not through the lens of my words, but by reading the answers she gave to the questions I posed, JA Jance is a mistress of mystery and a wonderful writer of the west.

For additional information on JA Jance, check out her website at www.jajance.com and her blog: https://jajance.com/Blog/

SD: Do you consider yourself a “Western Writer” in the sense that you carry on the traditions of the Old West? Although all your books are set (with the exception of a few) in the West, you really start on the “Western Writer” books with the ones set in Bisbee in 1993 –with Desert Heat introducing Joanna Brady who takes over the job of Sheriff from her recently deceased father.

Jance: I consider myself more of a storyteller than I do a novelist. I’m a girl from “a small mining town in the West,” Bisbee, Arizona,  I guess I am a western writer although I don’t actually write Westerns per se. My family moved from South Dakota in the early stages of what would become the “Storm of the Century,” a series of blizzards that shut down the Upper Midwest for months in the winter and early spring of 1949. I remember nothing of the cold we experienced both before and during the move, but the first morning of the day we moved into our new home in Bisbee some six weeks later imprinted on my heart. I distinctly recall hanging on the fence, looking up at the clear blue sky, and feeling the sun all over my body. That was the beginning of my love affair with Arizona, something which seems to shine through in my storytelling. If anyone is interested in my blog post on that blizzard and our move, here’s the link to that story on my blog:  https://jajance.com/Blog/2022/11/18/the-blizzard-of-the-century/

SD: What made you decide to start a second series, with a female protagonist,  and why did you set it in your old hometown? I love that she takes over for her father in spite of the negative attitude toward her doing so from her mom and others. Expectations of the era going against a woman in the role of Sheriff—can you speak specifically to that? It seemed to me from reading your bio that you experienced some of the same in your own life.

Jance: When I began writing in the early eighties, I wrote a thinly fictionalized true crime book that was set in Arizona. It was never published by anyone and for good reason—for one thing, it was 1200 pages long. When my agent suggested I write something that was entirely fiction, I set out to write the first Beaumont book. Since the only way to tell the story seemed to be in the first person, I had to find a way to create the voice of a middle-aged Seattle homicide cop. He was a Seattle native. At the time I had lived in the city for just over a year, so I had to do a whole lot of research to get the local details right. After writing nine Beaumont books in a row, I threatened to knock him off. At that point, my editor suggested I rework that first unpublished novel. The result was Hour of the Hunter, the first Walker Family book set on the Tohono O’odham Reservation west of Tucson where I taught for a number of years. Writing that book was like going on a several months-long visit to Arizona, and when I went back to Beaumont, it was fun again.

That’s when my editor suggested I come up with another series character so I could alternate books about each of them. By then,  knowing the discipline it takes to write consistently in the first person, I decided to use third. Since maintaining that male persona in a character was challenging, I decided to have a female protagonist—hence Joanna Brady. And since I was pressing the Easy Button here, I decided to set the story in a locale I knew well—southern Arizona, specifically Cochise County. And since I’m 6 feet,1 inch and have always wondered what it would be like to be short, I deliberately made Joanna Brady short—she’s 5 feet, 4 inches.

My original vision was that Joanna would turn out to be an amateur sleuth, but by then, I had been writing police procedurals for a long time. Every time Joanna tried to find out what was happening in the ongoing investigation into her husband’s death, I found myself telling her, “Hey, you can’t do that.”  That’s why, by the end of the first book, she was running for sheriff in her deceased husband’s place and on her way to becoming a professional law enforcement officer.

SD: What role does the location, the setting, play in the Joanna Brady mysteries? I note that the first are titled with place names. Do you consider the place a supporting character? Frankly, your descriptions of the area have made me want to make a trip to Cochise County!

Jance: I’ve been thinking about the spots in Arizona that really speak to me. Main Street in Old Bisbee is very much as it was in the early part of the twentieth century—a narrow two-way street running the twisty length of Tombstone Canyon with gray limestone cliffs on one side of the street and steep red-shale hillsides on the other. It wasn’t until decades after graduating from Bisbee High School, while writing the second Joanna book, that I finally came to understand why Bisbee High School’s colors are red and gray!

But while thinking about this interview, I’ve been recounting the things about Arizona I know and love and that I’ve tried to bring into focus for readers in my books.  If you’re driving westbound as you leave Bisbee, you pass through the Mule Mountain Tunnel. As you emerge from the semi-darkness of the tunnel, you come out with an expanse of brilliantly blue sky spread out ahead of you—the bluest sky I ever remember seeing anywhere. I love the stark limestone cliffs that border the western side of the Sulphur Springs Valley. Another place I love is the fascinating rock formations in the Chiricahua Mountains, a place formerly known as the Wonderland of Rocks. I love the huge boulders of Texas Canyon, east of Benson. Those always make me feel as though God walked away, leaving them behind after a gigantic game of marbles. And yes, our family went hunting for Arrowheads out along High Lonesome Road.

Growing up in Bisbee in the fifties while copper-mining was still king, I remember watching as the mountain between Upper Bisbee and Lowell was gradually whittled away and turned into the gigantic hole that is now the abandoned Lavender Pit. By the way, the pit was named after a man named Lavender and has nothing to do with the color. I also watched as an army of dump trucks carried waste from the pit and used that to build the massive mile long tailings dump that stretches out along Highway 80 east of town heading toward Douglas. Since the dump was close to Yuma Trail where we lived, my friend Donna Angeleri and I used to climb that dump when no one was looking just as Joanna does in book # 2.

I believe a lot of people are under the impression that Arizona is nothing but sand dunes and saguaros. So, I try to present the varied climates and vegetation in my books. By the way, there are no native saguaros growing in Cochise County!  I love the tenacious scrub oak that grows in the local mountain ranges—the Mule Mountains, the Chiricahuas, the Huachucas, and the Dragoons. And the climates are different, too. Bisbee is a mile-high town. In the summer, it’s generally ten degrees cooler than Tucson and twenty degrees cooler than Phoenix.

As someone raised in the desert, it’s hardly surprising that my favorite color is green in various shades—the brilliant emerald of newly leafed cottonwoods on the banks of the San Pedro River—the only wholly-north-flowing river in the continental United States. I also like the somewhat darker green that comes about when black-trunked, seemingly dead mesquite trees leaf out in the spring. And what brighter yellow is there than blooming palo verde trees in the early summer? Or what’s more golden than when winter rains cause the steep flanks of Picacho Peak to be covered with blooming poppies? And then there’s the lush dark green ocotillo leaves that magically appear and disappear on those thorny stalks whenever a rainstorm marches across the desert?

And I’m enamored of the animal life, multi-hued Gila monsters for example. I can do a credible imitation of a coyote howl, and I spent more than one sleepless night listening to the bleating sounds of newly awakened Colorado River toads. I once came close to a nighttime herd of javelina. The distinctive rustling of their quills made me think of shaking a bagful of desiccated human bones.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. I may not have been born in Arizona, but the place lives in my mind, heart, and imagination, and I try to make it come alive in my stories, as well.

As for Joanna working in a man’s job?  Yes, I’ve encountered that kind of prejudice in my own life. I wasn’t allowed in the Creative Writing program at the University of Arizona in 1964 on account of my being a “girl,” and I was among some of the first women to make my way into the formerly all man’s world of selling life insurance.

SD: In your development of Brady mystery characters do you draw on your own childhood relationships? I ask because you noted on your website that the character of JP Beaumont was influenced by your understanding of alcoholism through your negative experiences with your first husband, so I wondered if some of the people who walk through the pages in these mysteries have links to your past.

Jance: Just because I write fiction doesn’t mean I have to make up everything!  I incorporate people and places from my past into my books, turning them into fictional creations. The Bisbee in my books isn’t exactly the Bisbee I grew up in nor is it Bisbee as it is now. It’s a figment of my imagination. If you’ve met Joanna Brady’s mother in my books, you’ve met someone who, in many ways, resembles my mother, Evie, without being exactly like her. And physically, Brandon Walker, the cop in the Walker Family books, bears an uncanny resemblance to a man named Jack Lyons who was Pima County’s chief homicide investigator in the early seventies.

SD: Is there anything you would like to say to the readers of Saddlebag Dispatches (a magazine that focuses mainly on the old west)?

Jance: If you visit Tombstone’s Boothill Cemetery, readers will see the touristy, kitschy version of the Old West. If you travel a couple of miles northwest of that, you’ll find the real town cemetery. When you read the inscriptions on the tombstones, you’ll find that life in the Old West was no walk in the park. People died in their thirties and forties of cholera, gunshot wounds and other ailments that have been largely eradicated by antibiotics.

One of my favorite reference books is Marshall Trimble’s Roadside History of Arizona. The book is organized by routes, so with that in hand, you can follow along as we did, reading the book aloud with my husband at the wheel. My husband and I duplicated the route of the so-called Mormon Battalion as it crossed Skeleton Canyon and made its way West, almost being completely wiped out by missing two strategic waterholes between Tucson and Phoenix. By the time my husband and I reached Eloy, we were so thirsty we had to stop at the nearest Burger King for sodas. I’ve learned far more about Arizona History from that book than I ever did in my college level course on that same topic.

SD: Besides having the same hard work ethic that each of your main characters displays, is there anything you would like to say about your ability to continue to write three main series, plus a few more, while maintaining a high level of writing, and in my opinion, making each novel in each series, better than the one that preceded!

Jance: I’m currently in the process of starting a new Beaumont book. So far it doesn’t have a name, but it does have a thousand-word head start. Beau and I celebrated our 40th anniversary as author and character in 2022. I didn’t set out to write more than twenty Beaumont books. I set out to write just one. The other twenty-five are more or less  happy accidents, but part of that is due to the fact that, unlike Sue Grafton and Kinsey Milhone, I haven’t always written about that one set of characters or that one locale. Having multiple sets of characters and different locations for my stories has helped keep things fresh, both for me and for my readers.

——————

Thank you, J.A. Jance for your in-depth answers to these questions.

——————

Joan Leotta is a writer and story performer. She writes in many genres but is especially fond of sharing short stories, poems, and essays. Her work has been showcased in a variety of journals ranging from St. Anthony Messenger to Betty Fedora, Mystery Tribune, Saddlebag Dispatches, and Kings River Life. Her essays have appeared in the Italian American, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Sasee, skirt, and Eastern Iowa Review among others. She loves history, researching and collecting stories, both folk and real. When she is not playing with words on page or stage, she can be found walking the beach, daydreaming and collecting seashells.