There’s an old Western romance novel, “Call of the Canyon,” by cowboy author Zane Grey. It is set in Arizona’s Northland in the 1920s, featuring Oak Creek Canyon and the high desert terrain surrounding Flagstaff and Sedona. Stunning, glamorous Carley Burch is the heroine who follows her fiancé from her high-society life back East to the rugged and wild Southwest.
By the way, it was a passage in the book about Carley warming her hands by the fire in Flagstaff’s Hotel Weatherford that inspired hotel owner Henry Taylor to go ripping through the drywall to find the original fireplaces and fueled his passion for renovating the historic Victorian building.
I thought of Grey’s book when I met beautiful, serene Karen Russell during a Saturday afternoon party at her home in Sedona. She had recently moved there, the result of a middle-of-the-night calling that brought her to Oak Creek Canyon and the Red Rock Country. Here’s how she describes it: “I was taking a bath and suddenly it came to me. I have to move.”...