The writing of fiction is a dance between truth and invention. Pittman, Kentucky, the starting point of The Bean Trees, resembles any number of small towns in east-central Kentucky where I grew up. I didn’t invent its weathered look, its party-line phones, its inclination to rally around good gossip or a neighbor in need. Those things I described from experience in a real place. The same is true of other small towns in my novels, from Grace, Arizona to Isla Pixol, Mexico. They are genuine, but not identified.
This is why: a little town named in a widely-read novel might become a destination for literary voyeurs. I don’t want to be responsible for changing the character of a quiet, rural place. Also, if I set my story in an actual small town in Kentucky (or Arizona, or Mexico), those events would be false: everyone would know that in the history of their town no man named Hardbine had ever been blown over the Standard Oil sign by an exploding tire, for example. Still, every soul in the named town would be scouring the pages for themselves, their friends and enemies, and finding them. (Even though I didn’t put them there.) So I choose real settings but place them off the map, for two reasons: to preserve the illusion of truth, and the substance of privacy.
Cities are different. I’ve set parts of novels in Tucson, Mexico City, Atlanta, Seattle, Chicago, and Asheville, North Carolina, to name a few. These places are large enough to absorb events and people. As long as you get the weather and the civic character right, even residents who live in those places can probably suspend disbelief and accept the illusion of truth. So yes, Virginia, there is a Pittman, Kentucky. It exists in your heart and your imagination. If it sustains you from one page to the next, it’s true enough.