What is the setting of Suttree by Cormac McCarthy?

McAnally Flats by the Tennessee River in Knoxville is an actual place that cannot possibly ever have been as horrible as McCarthy portrays it. The sense is one of pure slime and degradation with no redeeming value with the exception of the occasional cemetery or open field. It is clearly a setting out of the 1950s, since it is so terribly run down and begins to undergo renovation toward the end of the story.