I agree about Tony Hillerman; he's the first one who came to mind. He truly brings the Southwest to life. Seeing Shiprock for the first time was really moving for me thanks to reading all of his novels.

I think Alexander McCall Smith does a good job of describing Botswana and the Kalahari.

Although I've never been to Appalachia, I feel like Sharyn Mccrumb's Ballad series of mysteries really captures that area and its people. You might say she "owns" that area.

John Steinbeck did a great job of making readers really see the Salinas/Monterey area of his time. The area has grown so much since then, but you can still see/hear echoes of what it was like when he was writing Tortilla Flats and Cannery Row.

Faulkner, of course, comes to mind. The first images I ever had of the deep south came from him. Many years ago I bought a book of black and white photographs with commentary from his novels, called Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. A vanished world, and in most ways, for the better.

Sarah Canary, I've a cousin who worked in the state's attys office in East Tennessee. She once told me that the boss encouraged all her new attys from elsewhere to read McCrumb to get an idea of the people they were dealing with.

Hillerman jumped to mind first for me also. And I swear Burke makes me smell the bayou and feel the heat.

While a couple of authors use Baltimore to good effect, the only one who comes close to giving a good sense of the region is John Barth. I'm thinking about his Tidewater Tales in particular, but even that is more about the Chesapeake than about Baltimore.

IMO, Daphne DuMaurier "owns" Cornwall. Her descriptions of the unique landscapes and the flavor of her novels are incomparable.

As well, William Styron "owns" my part of Virginia. Not only with his roman a clef, "Lie Down in Darkness" (Port Warwick = Newport News) but also with "A Tidewater Morning."

Returning to England, Laurie Lee will always be my guide to the rural Cotwolds, ("Cider With Rosie"),possibly accompanied by Miss Read....

And what better guide to the rural villages of provincial France than Alain Fournier, in "The Wanderer" aka "The Lost Domaine."

I guess where I live it would be the mythical Tara from Gone With the Wind. There is a house in Jonesboro, Georgia, that is marketed as the model on which Tara was based, but I've always imagined the land Margaret Mitchell described, the Tara of Scarlett's blood, as the land which her family owned. Much of the land where I live was once owned by three major families, which included the Mitchells. Most of that land has been sold off in bits and pieces as members of the families have died or moved on. I like to imagine my back yard as Scarlett's old stomping ground, but sadly, most of the land around here has been taken over by suburban sprawl - more Edward Scissorhands housing than old, majestic southern homes. The street where I live is approximately two miles in length, and I think we're one of the few streets in the area where you can still find some acreage, but all the homeowners here are under pressure to sell out to developers who want to build cheap subdivisions. You'll find very little of the soil that fed Scarlett's passion left here.

Eudora Welty and the part of the deep south of the U.S. known as the Delta. RP had a discussion on Welty's book "The Optimist's Daughter". "OD" is a marvelously crafted story, but it didn't showcase (and wasn't intended to showcase) the countryside, the family farms and the post civil war culture of the Delta as much as her book "Delta Wedding" does. In 'DW', one can feel the heat, hear the bees buzz, sense the constraint and the security of long held traditions, and taste the whiskey.

Edward Abbey owns the southwest deserts.

John Steinbeck owns Monterey/Salinas.

chris - Very interesting detail about the state's attorney in E. Tennessee. It makes you stop and think. I don't think there's any way a non-fiction paper about the people of Appalachia could ever have the same impact or give as real an insight into the local people.

It got me to wondering if there are other authors who might be used in a similar way. I couldn't come up with any right off.

Peter Mayle is Provence France, Elizabeth Peters is Egypt, James Herriot is Yorkshire. I am reading No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency right now and McCall Smith of course came to mind first! I am thrilled there are more in this wonderful series.

Janice Holt Giles for the southern Kentucky hill country. When I read "It's untelling . . ." in her books, I had never heard anyone use that term. We would normally say, "There's no telling . . ." Then I met a girl from Whitesville, KY, who used "it's untelling."

For the Mississippi Delta, I like Carolyn Haines. Her books are different; part of them are dark, and her Sarah Booth Delaney "Bones" series is funny, but to some extent, she draws on the supernatural in all of them, and they do reek of the black mud and honeysuckle.

Stan Barstow is Industrial and contemporary West Yorkshire with his fictional town of Cressley which features in all of the novels - the best known being A KIND OF LOVING and JOBY. He brings the whole area and its people to life.

dido do you think the character of the 'places' (but not the people) of SB's Yorkshire has changed since the days of which he was writing? I'm just thinking of the closing of the coalmines, the loss of heavy industry, the new 'retail' jobs with shopping 'outlets' besides every motorway exit . . . not to mention the huge rise in the immigrant population around Bradford, Leeds etc. I checked the area on 'Google Maps' and it all looks amazingly green.
Just interested.

Vee,

I think what you're suggesting is true. Just as in Wales, there is now nothing whatsoever remaining of the old coalmines and coalfields - it's as if the whole industrial revolution had never taken place:

'Nothing beside remains: boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away'

as Shelley said. Halifax for instance, a bowl set amongst hills, was once almost invisible from above for the smoke and fumes of the factories etc. which functioned there. Now the old buildings, cleaned up and turned into things like Art Galeries and Craft Centres and Boutiques, it is really rather a chic place. Dear old Bradford - Priestley's Bradford - he would hardly recognise were he to come back for the immigrant population, as you say, and the curry houses at every corner - you get some of the best curries in UK there. And then there's the tourist industry...... 'Last of the Summer Wine country (Holmfirth) and 'Emmerdale country (around Leeds). and in the early '60s, when I first visited Haworth to pay my respects to the Brontes, the Black Bull (where Branwell bought the gin for Anne......) was just like any other pub and buses ran up and down Main Street. Later, I lived there for 17 years and when I left it was almost totally overrun with tourists to such an extent that it was better known as 'Bronte Village' than as Haworth. Purists and locals threatened to deface the 'Bronte Village' signs, in fact - especially since most of the tourists were bus trippers who'd been taken for a day's outing and had never even heard of the Brontes. But they loved the cobbled streets and the quaint little pubs and probably thought us residents were pretty cute too!

Stan Barstow gives us this picture of a changing Yorkshire, too, in his later books - touristy Haworth appears in A BROTHER'S TALE(1978). But in his Ella trilogy (1990s), he turns right back to WW2 to tell his story

Dido

IMO, N. Kazansakis owns Greece. (Who can ever forget "Zorba"?) However, des Bernieres made an excellent job of leading me around the rural Island culture of Greece, and its incredible landscapes. And I still like John Fowles' descriptions of the Greece he saw and lived in "The Magus."

Winston Graham owns Cornwall and Adriana Trigiani owns southwestern Virginia.

Bookmom, can we declare a "tie" between Daphne DuMaurier and Winston Graham, re ownership of Cornwall? (See my post above.) ;-)

Woodnymph, sorry for the dueling geographies! Now I've been caught not carefully reading the posts. At least I'm in a different part of Virginia.

Lawrence Durrell and Konstantine P. Cavafy share Alexandria between them, but Cavafy has the earliest rights to the place. Egypt has changed since I visited the city 40 years ago but then Alex still had the same cosmolitan charm I imagine it had in the 30'ies, of dust and dirt and tired aristocratic splendour.

I think that Gerald Durrell owns the island of Jersey in my mind. And Miss Read owns the Cotswolds (or wherever she is located)....

If you've ever gone through rural Warwickshire in May, you'll know it's Shakespeare's, with 'luscious woodvine, sweet musk roses and eglantine' in all the hedgerows; not to mention the may itself in full blossom - 'Oh Proserpina for the flowers that frighted thou let'st fall from Dis's wagon...'

Dido