An hour or two in the morning before going to work, weekends and vacations — a few pages here and there, with several straight days of nonstop writing interspersed among long periods of inactivity — and it finally came together.

- The Upper Peninsula of Michigan provides such a great setting. What attracted you to this unique place?

I've been spending parts of my summers up there since 1967. My wife's family has a cabin on Lake Superior that became Steve Martinez's cabin on the shore. As a city boy I grew to value the remote semi-wilderness of Upper Michigan. "But there's nothing to do!" a highly urban relative once complained after his single visit there. "Exactly," I replied. One learns to amuse oneself in a place — Ontonagon County, the model for my fictional Porcupine County — that is so remote and unpopulated it has no mall, no Wal-Mart, no Starbucks, no McDonald's.

- It seems to me that if you are in Chicago or Detroit you are in the Midwest but if you are in the UP you are in the North (in fact you point this out when discussing the sports loyalties of the UP). At what point do you think the Midwest becomes the North? Are there important differences between the inhabitants of the two regions?

The line of demarcation is not exact, but it seems to me it follows the edge of the deep woods. Those who dwell in what used to be the Northern Frontier of the United States seem to me to be both harder and more tender than those who live farther south. They must work hard to survive on little money, and they must reach out to each other as well. There's a strong sense of community in places where there are few people. Those who live in the Midwest, especially urban and suburban areas, tend to be more isolated, philosophically and emotionally, from each other even though they are comparatively crowded together.

- As a city dweller you seem able to portray the rural people of Porcupine County without either idolizing them or demonizing them. How does a person from Chicago get into the hearts and minds of people living in one of the most scarcely populated areas in the country?

A journalist's curiosity helps. And I learned early on that these people, far from being unlettered and unsophisticated, have a fierce native intelligence and knowledge about nature that helps them survive. I found them utterly admirable and fascinating. And maybe these people sensed my interest in and respect for them and reciprocated. I reached out to them and they to me.