Kevin's Watch

What State does Covenant live in - educated guess'

Wild stab in the dark here, but i'm thinking.. a pretty miserable one. Most the time anyway.
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For some reason, I always thought PA was the state. I scanned my copies of the books and saw no definitive reference, but... for some reason, I thought it was PA...perhaps just because of the way Donaldsob described the foliage and ancillary "our-world" characters?

Today we have an answer to one bit.

In the Gradual Interview was wrote:I'm sorry to keep repeating myself; but I really did not base any of the places, powers, characters, or situations in the "Covenant" books on ANYthing from my own experience (except that I did own a white gold ring, leprosy is real, and Haven Farm is modeled on the place in south New Jersey--now a housing development--where I wrote the first three books).
(10/05/2005)

The first trilogy takes place in the weeks leading up to Easter, so the weather is definitely a clue as well. Can’t be too far north or snow and ice would be in the picture. Nor too far south or it would already be hot and the vegetation would be leafed out. Somewhere in the mid-section of the country then.

Well, I've lived in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and currently live in Tennessee.

I'd say considering they simply drove to Louisiana, and the way Sherriff Lytton spoke, and being someone who says 'Hellfire" alot....actually it's more like "hellfar"lol, which is common around here:

I think Covenant either lives in North Carolina or Tennessee.

The descriptions in the book remind me of the town I'm from in WVa(my birthplace), but it comes off more like North Carolina or Tennessee to me.

*puts down my 2 cents*

Latest reference to the source for Haven Farm in GI says it was in New Jersey.

I think Pennsylvania fits the bill best. Strongly seasonal climate, for one thing: the dreary early-spring weather of the 'real world' scenes in First Chrons doesn't fit the Deep South, including that portion of Texas with timber rattlers. Righter's Mill is an excellent find, Danlo! Toponymy fits Pennsylvania; so does the general topography. It can't well be Ohio: the area of Ohio with timber rattlers is almost all paved over with suburbs of Cincinnati.

As for the rustic bigots who inhabit the town: Pennsylvania has been described as 'Pittsburgh in the west, Philadelphia in the east, and Alabama in the middle'. Some forsaken bit of Appalachia is my best guess.

I'll go further out on that limb and guess that Linden Avery was from some washed-up coal-mining town in West Virginia, and has carefully trained herself out of an accent that you could cut with a chainsaw (because it would break a knife). And furthermore. . . .

Whoops. The limb just broke. Byeeeee!

i thought it was Michigan for some reason.

Is there anyone around the Watch who grew up in southern New Jersey and can tell us how Haven Farm in the books compare with southern NJ back in the 60s or 70s???

It couldn't possible be Michigan, Dennis, or there would be ankle deep snow (at the least ) on Easter morning.

i thought there was a lake?

Hmm, I wish Michigan could take the credit for the setting of a great story, but I can't see it. For one, there are no rattlers of any kind in Michigan, at least not to my knowledge. And sorry Duchess, but I don't recollect any deep snow in Michigan on Easter lol, maybe in the upper penninsula.

For 2-3 Easters running we froze and were snowed on for the sunrise services. We stopped going because of the weather, and just went to regular indoor services on Easters instead. And that was in Southeastern Michigan a few years ago. Back when my high school senior was middle school aged.

Has to be the southeast-tent revival,backwards bigot sheriff.

Yes, but Donaldson says that Haven Farm is based on southern New Jersey. I've been to northern Jersey, but never southern...I'm hoping someone will pop in and tell us about that area.

duchess of malfi wrote:Yes, but Donaldson says that Haven Farm is based on southern New Jersey.

The Farm is based on southern New Jersey. The town and countryside need not have been.

the area of Ohio with timber rattlers is almost all paved over with suburbs of Cincinnati.

Have you been in southern Ohio? I crossed that region a couple of years ago driving over to Serpent Mound from Cincinnati, whose suburbs don’t sprawl very far east at all. It’s hilly, quite wooded, rural, culturally very backward, and gone far to seed.
Also, lots of evagelical style churches. That doesn’t seem to fit as well with rural PA, which is much more mountainous and where a lot of the population is Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, descended from East European immigrants (as in “The Deer Slayer”.)
As for Michigan, it too lacks that “Bible-belt down south” culture (except in some of the old industrial suburbs). Also, no timber rattlers, although there are Massasaguas (sp?), small swamp rattlesnakes. I had a close encounter (no bite luckily) on a camping trip there once. (FYI: we had snow on Easter there in 1983, ironically one of our warmest winters)

I look at his expressions and immediately think a New England state...

"Hellfire and Damnation" "Bloody hell" they all sound like someone british-accented would say...well we all know that Covenant isn't british...

I say old chap, remove your hand from me this very instant! Eh wot!

but Somewhere in New England would be my best guess. We probably will never know, but i don't know if it matters. It could be somewhere completely made up. Maybe SRD really didn't mean for him to be applied to any specific State...i think where he's from represents the world as a whole (prejudice, ignorance, bitterness, lack of color like the Land...etc.)

Well you picked the right man for the job. Y'all probably associate me New Mexico, and well you should: I've lived here for 26 years. But I grew up as a "farm boy" in central Jersey, right near Princeton/ Ok Princeton: land of millionaires and the Governor's Palace a town where Einstien once lived and taught and Freeman Dyson still does-a town that vitually worships Woodrow Wilson and Bill Bradley. My mother hung with the intellectuals, but my friends and I worked all the time with the local farmers. White-clapboard farmhouses that alway look kinda dingy because of thin streaks of brickwash from the shingles just 10 miles from Princeton. Let's just say that even those farmers weren't really on the same "plane" as these "uber-brains". Nor did they want to be: very down to Earth-common sense-no nonsense-simple life-black and white.

Where we 12 miles SE of Flemington, which used to be the "dairy capital" of the US until Wisconsin quickly whisked that title away. I was fixing an isolated farmhouse near there one summer. In fact I performed a cleansing ceremony there when we found the basement painted black and Satanic drawnings all over the walls: But that's another story. Oh BTW I was reading Lord Foul's Bane for the first time then too. Anyway one of the few times I went to town on my moped I saw an ancient farmer-dusty overalls, jean jacket, farmhat with a straw of wheat sticking out of his mouth leaning against the rock wall. I came back, four hours later, and he hadn't moved an inch! Very zen!

Oh! Back to the subject (watching Finding Nemo with Adrien...you know how it is...): So farming's been a major industry in NJ for a very long time from Flemington to southern NJ lie all sorts of isolated little farm towns (New Jersey even calls itself The Garden State for that reason). Camden to the west, across the river from Philly, used to process most of that stuff for Kraft and Campbell and between there and the Jersey shore are tons of farms, such huge-mafioso owned industrials like the one that chased off Geraldo Rivera (when he was local and good) with shotguns for investigating illegal labor practicies, and small. As you approach the shore you run into miles of eerie pine barrens, where the "Jersey Devil" story was born.

The only time I ever came close to the heart of southern Jersey it was like looking at another country, it was August, so it was kinda dusty but I remember that everything looked white-washed even this one town. It was Sunday afternoon and not a soul was on the street. A friend of mine mentioned, "Man, you could host a KKK rally here and no one would ever know." About the only thing modern, at all, were two gas pumps at an ancient station and U. S. Army posters. This was in, I guess, 1976 and we did see a sheet banner on the way out of town advertising a "Camp Revival Metting".

Cant believe this hasnt been said---------DENIAL!

I've been thinking that there is a certain spot in the "real world" from which the summonings "reach out", a kind of thin spot between the worlds, and this is why Haven Farm is important.. (It's more complicated than that but needs its own thread in the spoiler section.)

Hile Troy worked in the Pentagon. I checked and the Pentagon is located in Arlington, Virginia. According to the map there are timber rattlers in Virginia. Somebody who has been to Virginia can say if the local color is correct.