The Deep Zone: A Novel

A Letter from Author James M. Tabor
Naming Names
If I had to sum up The Deep Zone’s protagonist in two words, they would be “beautiful” and “indomitable.” How do you name someone like that? Serendipity works in strange ways. Long before I wrote The Deep Zone, I was sitting on a stool next to Emmy Lou Harris in a bar where she was playing and I was working. On her lap she held a child. She said, “This is my daughter, Hallie. Hallie, this is Jim.”

“Hello, Hallie,” I said. “I love that name. It was my mother’s name, too.”

“That’s nice,” Hallie said. She was about five and radiated the same heavenly, ethereal beauty that marked her mother’s music.

“Would you mind keeping Hallie company while I do the next set?” Emmy Lou asked.

“My pleasure,” I said. “Is it okay if Hallie has a Coke?”

“Orange juice, please,” Emmy Lou said, and OJ it was.

Emmy Lou led off with “Queen of the Silver Dollar,” which always made me want to cry. Hallie and I played a game with straws. That was the extent of my relationship with Emmy Lou Harris and the beautiful Hallie. But such things stay with you, especially if a couple of months later you see Emmy Lou on the cover of TIME.

A few years after playing straw games with Hallie while her mother sang songs that made even hard saloonists weep, I was a cop on the streets of Washington, D.C. My commanding officer was Lt. Joyce Leland, as remarkable—and indomitable—a woman as any I ever met. Proof: at a time when there were few women cops, let alone commanders, she retired as Deputy Chief Joyce Leland.

Fast forward some decades to an author in search of the right name for his beautiful, indomitable heroine. There it was: Hallie Leland. Thank you, serendipity.