Location, Location, Location

How important is location to you, the reader? How authentic do you want the experience to be?

I'm working on the edits for Amish, Vamps & Thieves, the fourth book in the Bloodlines series. The story takes Anne, Augustine coven's Amish enforcer, back home to Ohio for the first time in sixty years.  My proofreader flagged a few things that confused her. In almost every case, the question revolves around an Ohio-ism.

Or more accurately, a Northwest Territory-ism.

Wait! you say. Ohio is smack dab in the middle of the U.S.

Now it is. Back in the 1700's, it was called the Northwest Territory (NWT) because it was, well, northwest of the original thirteen colonies. A huge swath of land between the western Great Lakes, the Ohio River Valley and the Missouri River that eventually became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.

If I mention euchre, folks in Texas look at me funny. Unless they're a transplant. Then they'll ask, "Got a deck?" A carbonated beverage is 'pop'. Athletic footware is pronounced 'ten-ah-shoes'.

So what do y'all (or you guys) think?