I notice that in DESERT LOST, you’ve taken us back to Arizona’s polygamy compounds that you explored so well in your best-selling DESERT WIVES. Why?
As time went by, I noticed that very few people realized young boys were victims in the polygamy compounds, too. And not just victims of sexual abuse, which is rumored to be rampant. Ask yourself this question: what happens to the “extra” nine men when one man can have ten wives? Obviously, under polygamy, there aren’t enough women to go around, so the prophets have devised a way to rid the compounds of those “left over” men -- and they do it while they’re young boys.
What do they do, exactly?
Sorry, for that information, you’ll have to read the book. But the answer is factual, based on the experiences of many young boys. By the way, my publisher, Poisoned Pen Press, has also just released a new trade paperback edition of DESERT WIVES as a companion volume to DESERT LOST. That edition of DESERT WIVES has a new Authors Note in it, giving updating information, little of which is cause for hope.
After DESERT WIVES was released, you received several death threats. Do you expect the same thing with DESERT LOST?
Anyone who dares tell the truth about the sexual abuse and welfare scams in the compounds is threatened, so I’m hardly an exception. Aren’t you scared? I got used to being threatened when I worked at the Tribune. It’s all in a day’s work for me. Besides, my editor at the newspaper always said that if we weren’t making some people unhappy, then we weren’t doing our jobs.
You also used Scottsdale itself as a setting for a polygamy compound in DESERT LOST. Isn’t that a bit far-fetched?
Not at all. Many of Phoenix’s suburbs have polygamists living in them. In fact, I discovered that I have polygamist relatives (long story) living in the town next to Scottsdale, so all I had to do was shift the city boundary slightly.
Let’s talk about DESERT CUT, which many people consider even more shocking than DESERT WIVES. How did you find out about this ancient practice that is still destroying the lives of so many children?
Remember, I’ve been a journalist for 20 years, and journalists have access to information that the average person doesn’t. That said, I also read three to four newspapers every day, plus keep up with the more reliable news blogs. When in dire straits for new information, I just pick up the phone and call other journalist friends. I first encountered the information in DESERT CUT back in 2000, although I’d heard rumors of it before. There was a big child abuse case going on back east, and after reading between the lines, I made a few phone calls. After I got over my horror, I started doing the in-depth research that eventually resulted in DESERT CUT.
It’s hard to believe that this horror is being practiced in the U.S. Are you certain?
Absolutely. It’s just not talked about openly because the subject is so intimate that most people are squeamish about it. When they do talk about it, they use totally inaccurate euphemisms to describe what’s actually being done to the children.
Isn’t the practice you write about in DESERT CUT against the law?
Of course it is, but that makes no difference. The practice continues because the people who do this to their children keep it secret, and force their children to keep it secret, too. And children, especially those in this particular cultural group, tend to mind their elders. Just about the only time the procedure comes to the attention of the law or child protective services is when something goes wrong and the child dies. And the children do die, frequently. Some health authorities estimate that up to one-third of the children who have been subjected to the procedure die, either from immediate blood loss or later infections. There is no anesthetic or after-care.
Why hasn’t anyone done anything about this?
When you don’t know something is happening, how can you do anything about it? That’s why I wrote DESERT CUT, to warn people to be on the lookout for this situation, and how to tell when it might be happening. By the way, in late 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO), formally declared the procedure “torture.”
About how many children has this happened to here in the U.S.?
The government estimates that it’s around 150,000. That’s an awful lot of misery.
I just don’t understand why parents would do this to their children.
In some cultures, controlling a child is more important than the child’s life. This is especially true where girls are concerned.
Speaking about horrible things being done to girls, how do you feel about the conviction of polygamist Warren Jeffs on child rape conspiracy charges? You based DESERT WIVES: POLYGAMY CAN BE MURDER on some of the polygamy compounds you wrote about for the newspaper.
I feel wonderful that Jeffs if finally being punished for his actions, but it’s only a start. By the way, the FBI caught Jeffs on my birthday. I was on a cruise ship off Alaska that day, and my friends back in Scottsdale, Arizona, tell me they could hear my cheers all the way back home.
The desert around Scottsdale keeps popping up in your books, such as in your last book, DESERT RUN. Why is that?
Partially because I live there, but also because the area is so full of beautiful contradictions and amazing history that it inspires my work. Scottsdale’s roots go back to the Western frontier and early prospector days. Only a few decades ago did we stop having cattle drives down the main street of town. As a matter of fact, we still have real, live cowboys and sheep-herders here. In my wild single days I actually dated the cowboy who became the model for Lena’s ex-boyfriend, Dusty.
We still have Indians, too, although they now run casinos, drive new cars, and shop at Scottsdale Fashion Square Mall while using their picture cell phones. Because I live less than a mile from the Pima-Salt River Maricopa Indian Reservation, the Indians are a part of my daily life (we shop at the same stores, go to the same movie theaters), and I enjoy attending their pow-wows.
As for other echos of the Old West, from time to time I can still spot a modern-day prospector and his pack horse trotting down the side of the highway headed for the Superstition Mountains, hoping to find the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. Yet for all that, Scottsdale is one of the most modern cities in the world.
Do you use much of that history in DESERT RUN?
DESERT RUN is all about history! During World War II, the unpopulated desert area between Scottsdale and Phoenix served as a POW camp for captured German U-boat crews. It was called Camp Papago, after one of the local tribes. On Christmas Eve, 1944, twenty-five German POWs escaped by tunneling under the stockade fence. They had build a collapsible boat and planned to float down the Salt River and then the Gila River to Mexico. No one had told them that with the exception of our so-called "monsoon season," our rivers are dry.
The Germans wound up wandering around the desert as miserable as they could be, until they were eventually captured by ranchers and Indians. A couple of POWs were so desperate that they even surrendered to a local housewife in exchange for a hot meal. The escape made national headlines, and was referred to as "Arizona’s Great Escape." During their time at the camp, some of the POWs fell in love with the desert and the American way of life. After the war was over, several of them moved to Arizona and have resumed their friendships with their former captors.
Let’s come back to DESERT WIVES for a minute, because four years after its release, people are still talking about the book. How accurate is the information about Arizona’s and Utah’s polygamy compounds that you wove into DESERT WIVES?
The manuscript was read by a high-ranking Arizona government official (she’s now the governor of Arizona, by the way) in order to weed out any inaccuracies which might exist. In 2000, I traveled to several compounds in order to observe the lifestyle for myself, and studied hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles dating back more than fifty years, as well as many local and national articles written recently on the situation.
I also contacted Tapestry Against Polygamy, an organization of ex-polygamist “wives” (the women are more accurately termed concubines, not wives -- they get passed around at the whim of the "prophet"). Because polygamy is illegal in both states, the compounds are very secretive, so gathering information about these places can be extremely difficult. And dangerous. You can’t just walk up to a polygamist and ask him why he has twenty-five wives, and why so many of them are collecting Welfare, because he might sic the compound dogs on you!
More information came from the few girls and women who have managed to escape this lifestyle and have told their stories to the media and to law-enforcement officials. They have recounted many incidences of predatory sexual behavior towards women and children by polygamist males, as well as numerous instances of battering. It is utterly amazing to me that for so long the state governments of Arizona and Utah allowed them and their illegal compounds to flourish at the American tax-payer’s expense. Because of the huge public outcry with DESERT WIVES’ release, that is now slowly changing.
How difficult are your books to research?
Easy, in the case of DESERT RUN. I live within walking distance of the old prison camp, which I frequently visit, even though part of it is now a training field for the Oakland Athletics baseball team. I’ve also gone inside some of the German officers’ old barracks; they have been towed to various sites around Scottsdale and are in the process of being renovated. Many local historical societies were happy to help with the research for DESERT RUN, so information about the actual escape was easy to come by.
What was more difficult to research was Ethiopian immigration patterns and the reasons for them. Lena becomes involved in the case when an Ethiopian immigrant she knows is arrested for the former U-boat commander’s murder. Researching the treatment of gay soldiers during World War II was no picnic, either. Regardless of their bravery, these men were stripped of their medals and given Dishonorable Discharges, thereby losing all veterans’ benefits.
Also fascinating to research were the cars popular during the era, the impact of gas rationing on Arizona ranchers and farmers, and the music strike by the American Federation of Musicians that ended so many music careers. However, DESERT CUT and DESERT WIVES were much more difficult -- and dangerous -- to research. People living lawless lives don’t want anyone to know about it.
How has Lena changed since we first met her in DESERT NOIR?
She’s getting better. In DESERT SHADOWS she entered Anger Management Therapy and the insights she gained there have eased her life somewhat. But she’s still a very wounded woman. Having been raised in a series of abusive foster homes, Lena still doesn’t know who her parents are, nor why she was found at the age of four, lying by a Phoenix street with a bullet in her head.
In some ways, she is making progress. She’s trying to overcome her fear of intimacy by opening her heart, but that seems to be bringing her a new set of problems. Oh, she has changed in another way. After one of her experiences in DESERT NOIR, she’s now almost as afraid of confined spaces as she is of dark closets. But she’s working on it.
Were you surprised by the very warm reception by critics and readers of DESERT NOIR?
I was astounded. So many readers, some of them located thousands of miles away from Arizona, wrote and e-mailed me about how much they loved Lena and the setting of the book. Some of these people were raised in foster homes themselves, and said that my portrayal of Lena’s problems was accurate. So accurate, apparently, that libraries from all across the U.S. began using DESERT NOIR for their discussion groups.
But Lena and her interior demons struck a nerve with people everywhere, not just former foster children and adoptees. Maybe that’s because Lena is no super hero, just a flawed human being like the rest of us. People can identify with her. Still, Lena refuses to give into her insecurities and terrors. She just keeps on keeping on, doing what she has to do in order to get through life and help others at the same time. Isn’t that what we all try to do?
What about Lena’s parents? She doesn’t seem any closer to discovering their identities.
Oh, yes, she is. I drop a major bomb about her parents in DESERT CUT. In DESERT WIVES, Lena learned something about her mother, and in DESERT SHADOWS she had a flashback about her father. In DESERT RUN she learned that she is drawn to certain kinds of cases because they reflect something that happened to her long, long ago, and which she can’t remember. We revisited that scene in the bus, just before the four-year-old Lena was shot in the head and left for dead, and actually learn an important name from those early, lost years.
Will your readers eventually find out everything about Lena’s parents?
Certainly. But we’ve got a few more Lena Jones books to go until we get to Desert Redemption.
Lastly, do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Read the classics, but also read recent Pulitzer, Nobel and Booker prize-winning books to familiarize yourself with what excellent modern writing looks like. If you want to write mystery fiction, get a list of the Edgar, Agatha, and Macavity winners (and nominees) of recent years and read your way through them. Notice how they handle character and scene descriptions while moving the plot along at the same time.
Take a college-level creative writing class (by a many-times published writer -- you want someone who knows the difference between theory and practice).
Also, join a critique group. If you can’t find one, start one. My own critique group, the Sheridan Street Irregulars, has been meeting regularly at my house for the past 18 years. And all of the Irregulars have come a long way, baby!
Julia Buckley's interview with Betty
Quick Questions & Answers
Is Dusty still Lena's boyfriend in DESERT RUN?
"Let's put it this way. In DESERT RUN, Dusty has fallen off the wagon again, so Lena has moved on. But Lena being Lena, she always seems to fall for a man with a past."
Has Lena changed since we first met her?
"She's getting better... but she's still a very wounded woman. Lena still doesn't know who her parents are, nor why she was found at age four... with a bullet in her head."
How real is Lena's Arizona?
"Her building is a real building, and Scottsdale's Main Street is a real street. Papago Park, where Lena jogs every day and where Camp Papago used to be situated divides Scottsdale from Phoenix."
Want to ask more questions? Check Betty’s blog at:
www.bloggingwebb.com
or message her at WEBBscottsdale@aol.com
You can also call Poisoned Pen Press at (480) 945-3375. Betty is always available for interviews, signings, writing seminars, and talks to clubs and service organizations.
Desert Cut, Desert Run, Desert Shadows, Desert Wives and Desert Noir are available at your local bookstore or may be ordered directly from the publisher, Poisoned Pen Press at
1-800-421-3976