SETTING and CHARACTER

As a fiction writer, I've always like to visit the setting where my story takes place. For example,  in my recent novel, Counting on Grace, the book really came to life when I found the site of the mill where my character had doffed bobbins in 1910.  Many times I went back there to listen to the water sluicing over the dam, to stare at the same forested Vermont hillside Grace might have seen from the second floor window of the textile factory where she worked.  That was the best way I knew...