Dim Lights Thick Smoke takes place in the 1980’s in Holbrook, Arizona. Travelers driving west from Chicago to LA would pass through Holbrook almost a hundred miles after Gallup, New Mexico. Most of the action in Dim Lights Thick Smoke takes place in or near the Sunset Motel in Holbrook’s stretch of 66 not long after Interstate 40 has made the fabled highway obsolete.