The Adirondack Novel

For me, The Truth and Legend of Lily Martindale felt more like an Adirondack novel than Banks' The Sweet Hereafter. I think that the Adirondacks as setting was more important for Shartle's novel than Banks'. The Sweet Hereafter, as I wrote before, felt as though it could have been set in any small town in rural and impoverished America. And maybe some of that feeling comes from his inspiration for the novel coming from an event that happened in rural Texas, but Shartle's novel cannot be easily set outside the Adirondacks for a couple of reasons. One, hermits are rare outside the Adirondack Park. Hermits can only happen in places where solitude and a good measure of self-sufficiency is possible, which reduces the wild areas in which to be a hermit down to only a few places with the Adirondacks being one. Two, the Great Camps are pretty uniquely Adirondack and the flocking of the rich to the mountains is, at this time, something that defines the Adirondacks, though now the rich also flock to the hills of Montana and Idaho and Colorado for similar mountain retreats. Three, the Adirondacks are already a place of mystery and so would be a good place to set a legendary character. I think that, in order for a book to be an Adirondack novel, it needs to justify being set in the Adirondacks, give a reason to be set there other than it is a small, insular mountain community. There needs to be a strong tie to something undeniably integral to Adirondack identity and culture that would make setting the book in another mountain community like Colorado or Idaho difficult.