Road to nowhere

These Natural State places don’t exist, or never did

Imaginary Arkansas map
Imaginary Arkansas map

Arkansas is -- and isn't -- the setting of Mark Caldwell Jones' new young adult novel, Opal Summerfield & The Battle of Fallmoon Gap, the first in a new fantasy series.

Jones draws on his childhood memories of trout fishing in the Ozarks to name real places. Sixteen-year-old Opal lives a slingshot's distance from the White River. She knows about Blanchard Springs Caverns, where Jones' electrician father did some of the lighting.

But Opal's town of Grigg's Landing is -- where, exactly? Near Cotter's Bridge, Jones specifies, and close to Firefly Notch, which is -- where?

The book adds Grigg's Landing to Arkansas' already colorful atlas of imaginary places. The map of make-believe Arkansas is where to find Donald Harington's little town of Stay More, Burt Reynolds at home in Evening Shade and humanity's last stand in John Hornor Jacobs' Bridge City.

"I think America needs its own fantasy universe," Jones says. "Why should Europe have a monopoly on witches and wizards?"

The 44-year-old author chased his goal of a writing career from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville to Los Angeles. He wrote Opal Summerfield on a visit back to his home state, and credits Ozark folklorist Vance Randolph's books (We Always Lie to Strangers) for inspiration.

"It was very fun to imagine what if these monsters and legends of the Ozarks, that the old timers tell kids, were real," Jones says.

In Los Angeles, he finds the Ozarks in general might as well be a fantasy landscape. "It has been a surprise to me to find out how few people know about the Ozarks," Jones says.

For them, he adds a word of advice from "Professor Hans Fromm" of Fallmoon Gap. The professor lets on that "explorers ... may find many of the locations in this book."

"You could do worse than getting lost in the Ozarks," according to this authority. "Just make sure you avoid being eaten by the dangerous creatures that still roam those treacherous hills."

GUIDE TO NOWHERE

Arkansas has been wild on imagination since the earliest tall tales. Thomas Bangs' short story "The Big Bear of Arkansas" (1841) describes a bigger-than-life land of enormous turkeys roosted in stupendous trees. Biggest of all is the bear he tries to shoot, only to find this hard-headed bruin can shake off a musket ball between the eyes.

Style on 06/08/2014

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