Somewhere along the line I got fixated on western Nebraska (specifically Dawes County). I read about a fossil exhibit of two mammoths stuck together at the tusk. I then decided to set part of my novel in Dawes County (in a fictional town outside of Crawford). When trying to imagine what it was like to live there during frontier and dustbowl times I visited a historical museum in the area. This photo is from the Library of Congress, but it also looks like something from my brain.