Interview with author Margaret Coel

By Patti Thorn, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published August 29, 2008 at 11:50 a.m.

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Photo by Javier Manzano

Margaret Coel

Let's start with your Denver story. What attracted you to the 1860s?

When I was asked to write one of these stories, I said immediately, "Oh I want the 1860's." That was Larimer Street for me because I've done a lot of research in that time period and it was such an exciting time. All the gold seekers coming here, the immigrants from the Eastern part of the country flooding into Denver, all the buildings going up, and you could hear the hammering and chiseling all during the day and night and the wagons clomping down the street....There was everything going on here, but mostly it was just a decade of hope. This was a new land, a new place. And I thought, "Oh, that's what I want to write about."

I loved your character for her feistiness. She's not the usual pioneer woman you see in movies, cowering while the men protect her. What gave you the idea for Mary Ann?

I've always been really fascinated with the idea of the women who came here, and the wonderful journals they left. Some of them even wrote books. And what they talked about was the freedom they had here; they could just feel the shackles falling off them as they came across the plains. So I thought, "I'm going to write about a woman like that." And then I came across the fact that there was one safe in Denver in those very early days, and sometimes it just takes that little kernel, and you say "OK, I can build a story around that."

Did people actually make a living the way she does with the safe — or was that something you imagined?

No, people did do that. They did make a living that way — not only in keeping the gold, but also a lot of people started grubstaking the prospectors, giving them enough money to live on until they found gold and then they got a piece of the (profits).

You write mysteries about the Arapahoes of the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. What drew you to that setting?

I became interested in the Arapaho people out of my interest in history. The first book that I wrote (Chief Left Hand) was about one of their great leaders here in the mid 1800s. That's what took me into the Arapaho world. The government happened to send them to a reservation in central Wyoming, so when I decided to write mystery novels, I thought, "I'll set the novels on the reservation."

At the time, I was a big fan, still am, of Tony Hillerman, and I thought, " Maybe I can do what he did with the Navajos."... There's a lot going on on any Indian reservation — and certainly on the Wind River Reservation — that lends itself to mysteries. There's a lot of crime there, a lot of abuse, addiction, there are casinos. So there are all these things that lend themselves to mystery novels.

I read that you base your stories on actual crimes...

I get a lot of ideas for my stories out the newspaper — I read three newspapers a day, including the Rocky — and I clip, clip, clip anything, anything that has to do with what's going on in Indian country. There's just so much happening. so many things I couldn't even make up.

Your books are lauded for their authenticy. How did you gain entree to the Wind River reservation?

I gained entree while I was researching Chief Left Hand. Another writer who had written about the Arapahos took me under her wing and introduced me to the people. What was lovely about it is, she was an elderly woman, she had a lot of grey hair, and they love and respect elderly people, and so they loved her. Here she brings me along, and that was a wonderful entree. And then I just kept going back.

You have said that your main characters came to you in a dream. Tell us about that.

My characters walk around in my dreams, no question about it (laughs). When I started looking for my main character, I wanted to write from an outsider's point of view, because I'm an outsider. I started looking around. Who are the outsiders? On a reservation, they are FBI agents, doctors, nurses, social workers, librarians — all very worthy professions, but I wasn't getting really excited, and then all of the sudden in my dreams (laughs) is this really tall, good-looking, red-headed Irishman walking around, and I said, "Well who are you?" He said, "Well, I'm a priest." I said, "You're a priest? I did not set out to write about a priest."

But there's a Jesuit Mission on the reservation and it's been there almost from the beginning, and I thought, "Well, OK, this will work." So that's how Father John O'Malley came to be.

And then I wasn't really comfortable with the fact that I now had a white man solving the murder and putting everything to rights. So I thought, "I want a strong Arapaho voice," and I wanted to write from the point of view of a woman, and here comes Vicky Holden walking into my dreams. (Laughs.)

Really? She also came to you in a dream?

She did too. Oh yeah, she did too.

Now you have a new mystery, Blood Memory, with a whole new set of characters. Your heroine is a Denver reporter. Obviously my first question is: for which newspaper?

I guess that's a question that readers are going to have to figure out (laughs). I wanted her to be with a major paper, and she does have her competitor on the other paper who's chasing after the same story, so there's that little bit of competition going on.

Somebody is trying to kill her, and at first she thinks it's because of something she's written. But very early in the book, she realizes it's because of a story she's working on and she doesn't know which story that is.

It (the novel) deals with the Sand Creek Massacre of the Cheyenne and the Arapaho people and really is a take off on what happened in 2004 when those tribes tried to get some land out by DIA to build a casino. I thought, "This is interesting and, well, I can take off from that."

Can readers expect this to be a continuing series?

Well, I don't know. It's very interesting; the advanced reviews are all calling it the first of a new series. I don't think my editor knew that (laughs). So it's really going to depend upon what my publisher thinks. But right now I'm writing another novel with Father John and Vicky, so I'm back with my old friends here for awhile and that book will be out next year.

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