📚 Behind the Book 📚

We asked Victoria to tell us a bit about how The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue came to be. Here's what she had to say.

Collage of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and author's photo

Stories are rarely single things, ideas conceived of whole. More often they are like ingredients that come together at some point, combined to form a meal.

Nearly a decade ago, I was living in an ex–prison warden's garden shed in Liverpool (as strange as it sounds). At the time, a housemate traveled for work, and would often drop me off in random places for the day. One chilly morning, she deposited me in a small Lake District town called Ambleside, where it was gray and drizzling, and I spent hours hiking and getting lost on purpose. At one point, I ended up at the top of a tall rise, surrounded by the world to every side, and entirely alone. And in that moment, I thought, I bet this is how it feels to live forever. Bone-weary and buzzing, tired and awake and confronted with an endless stretch of space. I had thought of telling a Faustian tale. I had wondered at Peter Pan, and the different griefs of forgetting, and being forgotten. I had studied art history in college, and wondered at the marks we leave on the world, and the sources behind our ideas. But there, at the top of that hill, the ingredients began to meld into the story of a young woman in 18th century France, afraid of how little she's lived, and how fast her life is passing her by.

It would be several years before I knew the full shape of Addie's story, several more before I had the courage to write it down, and several more before anyone would have the chance to read it, but I was 23, and getting gently rained on, with an hour's hike back to the world, when it began.

List of inspiration: Winter Counts

David Heska Wanbli Weiden tells us about the people, places, and things he was thinking about while writing.

Credit: thereviewbooth

I wrote Winter Counts over the course of two years — roughly 2017 to 2019. My inspiration came from a variety of sources: places and businesses in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Colorado; books and music I loved; certain foods and drink; and my own family, especially my sons, David Jr., who was thirteen when I started writing the book, and Sasha, who was eleven.

My primary literary influences were Louis Owens, James Welch, and Larry McMurtry.

Credit: University of Oklahoma Press, Penguin Classics, Simon & Schuster

Nightland by Louis Owens is one of the greatest — if not the greatest —indigenous crime novels ever. Owens blended complex characters, a gripping plot, and surreal prose to create the template for Native mysteries and thrillers.

Winter in the Blood by the remarkable Native writer James Welch uses first-person narration to create a tone that’s unmistakable. Here’s a sample: “But I have seen you when the weather turns, when the sun is so high it no longer warms the earth but hangs pale above the chill wind, and the swift clouds, and dusk, the dusk, dusk . . .”

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry is one of my favorite novels, a book to which I return periodically and never tire of. Although there’s much to admire in Lonesome Dove, it’s the juxtaposition of dark and light scenes that inspired me for Winter Counts. I realized that I needed to vary the chapters in my novel so that the humorous scenes would provide a welcome relief from the more intense chapters.

As for music, there were two artists who deeply inspired me while I worked on the book: Neil Young and the punk band X.

Credit: Reprise Records, Elektra Records

I played Tonight’s the Night by Neil Young nonstop while writing the novel, especially while drafting the final chapters. It’s arguably Neil’s bleakest album, and it helped me inhabit the dark space that my character Virgil Wounded Horse is in when his nephew Nathan is abducted.

The other music that inspired me is the Los Angeles punk band X, especially their third album, Under the Big Black Sun. I think their second album Wild Gift is their masterpiece, but the songs on Big Black Sun perfectly matched the mood I was trying to create in Winter Counts.

Frybread, pizza, and Shasta Cola.

Credit: CC BY-SA 3.0

Food plays a large role in Winter Counts, especially the indigenous cuisine movement that’s been emerging in recent years. However, I was most inspired by the food and drink that I grew up with: frybread, pizza, and Shasta Cola.

I’m not very kind to frybread in the novel, and that’s because I’ve never really cared for it (which is heresy to many Natives). It’s an unhealthy food that’s not a traditional indigenous dish. This simple bread usually consists of flour, sugar, and salt, deep-fried in lard, although there are many variations. Still, it’s considered the iconic Native food, and it appears at several points in the book.

Pizza is almost certainly my favorite food as well as that of Nathan and Virgil Wounded Horse. However, good pizza (or any pizza, for that matter) is hard to come by on the Rosebud Reservation, now that PJ’s Perfect Circle Pizza has closed. In Winter Counts, I describe a terrible pizza restaurant on the rez — JR’s Pizza, which of course does not bear any resemblance to the actual PJ’s Pizza. Right?

Finally, I mention Shasta Cola throughout the book, as it’s Virgil’s favorite soft drink. For me, this is a reference to my own youth, when I drank Shasta almost exclusively and grew to love it. I grew up in a financially challenged home, and my mother was forced to save money wherever she could. Thus, we drank the cut-rate pop, rather than those fancy name brands. Today, Shasta is harder to come by, at least in Colorado, and is usually only found at Walmart or the dollar stores.

Businesses and landscapes in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Denver.

Close-up photo of carhenge art installation

Carhenge. (Credit: By Emilykil, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Of course, I was also inspired by the various places and locations that appear in Winter Counts, and I tried to create a setting for the book that was generally accurate, although I took many dramatic liberties when necessary. So, there are a number of sites that don’t exist except in my imagination. However, I was thrilled to write about certain businesses and landscapes in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Denver, although some of these have since closed.

On the Rosebud Reservation, I was inspired by the Rosebud Casino, the previously mentioned PJ’s Pizza, the Buffalo Brew coffee shop, and our magnificent hills and prairies. I also spent some time on the rez at the ruins of my grandmother’s shack — her final domicile, which lacked running water or electricity, and where she spent her final years. Although she doesn’t appear in the book, I was deeply moved by her spirit and resiliency.

Just across the border in Nebraska, I set important scenes at the Derby Bar in Valentine, which was the only Native bar in that town but has now closed. And of course, there’s a crucial scene set at Carhenge, which is truly one of the weirdest and most wonderful roadside sites in America.

For the Colorado chapters, I was inspired by some old-school venues that have defined Denver for decades. The venerable Hangar Bar, now sadly closed after Denver police made accusations of crack cocaine sales there; the wonderful Casa Bonita restaurant; the Swansea/Elyria neighborhood, where I grew up; and East Colfax Avenue, once called by Playboy magazine “the
longest, wickedest street in America.”

Finally, I was inspired by my sons, David and Sasha.

David Jr. and Sasha. (Courtesy of David Heska Wanbli Weiden)

In many ways, David Jr. is the model for the character Nathan in the book. Nathan’s love of rap music, his sometimes snarky yet loving attitude; his bravery and courage — all of these came from my son, filtered through a dramatic lens, of course.

My son Sasha is two years younger than David, but I was also inspired by his wonderful sense of humor and love of life. Ironically, David Jr. has not read Winter Counts as he is more of a video game fan (which breaks my heart as a writer, but I’m hoping he’ll become a reader later in life.) However, Sasha did read an early version and gave it a thumbs-up, which is my most treasured review.