So the other night Jeff and I were in the bar that I write about in Thief (page 33) at 8 pm. and the place was deserted. It was a nice night, and the drink-after-work people had gone home, and the drinkers of the evening hadn't yet arrived.

In fact, we weren't even there for a drink — we went to town to get dinner, but a couple of places stop serving food by 8 at night, (including the A&W), so we decided to get a burger at the bar. They've always had great burgers, and now that there's no smoking, it's even more enjoyable, at least for the two of us. In the old days the bar was the kind of place that would even make your bra smell smoky if you sat there too long.

Anyway, this only matters because I want to be clear that the insight I got wasn't alcohol-induced. But sitting in the bar it became very clear to me that at least part of what I was trying to do when I wrote Thief was to create a portrait of specific people (Suzanne & her cowboy, as well as Breville) in a place (the north woods). Lots of the talk surrounding the book focuses on the relationships in the novel, and that's certainly the heart of the book, but there's a whole context for those relationships that I was trying to evoke.

I had certain images in mind as I wrote, and those images were my companions during the writing. Smoke-filled bars. Driving alone on gravel roads up here in the north woods. Jack pines and cold lakes. Coming home at dawn after I spent the night with someone, my feet bare inside my Dan Post cowboy boots. And the song "Tougher Than the Rest."

It's a Bruce Springsteen song from 1987's "Tunnel of Love," but the version I kept playing in my head was Emmylou Harris's cover from her 1990 "Brand New Dance." The song changed meaning entirely when Emmylou sang it because it was a woman declaring that "If you're rough enough for love / Honey I'm tougher than the rest."

I love everything about the song as Emmylou sings it, but what resonated so much with me while I was writing Thief was the idea that you have to be tough if you want to love some people, if you want to become entangled with them. Love isn't all sweetness. But I also don't mean that it has to be "dark" or "dysfunctional," which are the terms people are always trying to apply to Thief. I mean that when people have lived long enough and are no longer innocent, there's some ground to cover with them that isn't easy or straightforward because they carry a lifetime of experiences.

"It ain't no secret
I've been around a time or two..."

All that ground to cover only increases in size and complexity if you choose to become involved with someone who's difficult in any way. But don't many of us have difficult people in our lives? People we go on choosing to love because they're valuable or cherished in some way in spite of their flaws?

ANYWAY — that was the backdrop of Thief. That was the world and the way of looking at things that I tried to put on the page.