Sunset on Madison Lake I love it when fiction intersects with reality in my life. Maud Hart Lovelace grew up in Mankato, Minnesota in the early part of the twentieth century, and wrote a series of books, the Betsy-Tacy books, about that experience. My grandmother knew Lovelace and gifted my cousin and I with signed copies of the books. I read and reread them, feeling that I knew the characters personally and the places around "Deep Valley" (Mankato) that they inhabited. Last weekend, when we were in the Mankato area, we camped at Madison Lake. I thought about how, every summer, Betsy's family would stay at a place she called Murmuring Lake, and each night her father would drive the buggy out from town after work to spend the evening with the family. But there are many lakes around Mankato and was very surprised to discover after we got home that Madison Lake and Murmuring Lake are one and the same.
In a different twist, fiction intersecting with fiction, last night we watched The Good Doctor, a new series about a young autistic man who is also a brilliant surgeon---a very similar plot to The Savant of Chelsea, by Suzanne Jenkins. Suzanne and I have become email friends in the last year and I really enjoy her books. Her main character is a woman but her special focus as a doctor and lack of social skills could easily have been a basis for the TV series.
Finally, this weekend we will be at Maquoketa Caves State Park, intersecting with my own fiction. Members of the National Serro Scotty Organization, a vintage camper group will be there. The president of the group contacted me last fall and said they were planning this trip because several had read my book, Bats and Bones. We hope we don't intersect with any murders.
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