Esoteric, exotic, mosaic - three things to note about Anthony Doerr's style

A few oddities to note about the stories of Anthony Doerr, especially in his current collection, "Memory Wall": the settings. This guy apparently lives in Idaho but he is widely traveled, at least in his reading and imagination. The first four stories in this collection are set respectively in S. Africa (in the undefined future), Wyoming (Laramie - but could be anywhere in the rural West), the Korean DMZ (story actually set in Idaho but much is about the DMZ as related in letters), and China, in the territory flooded by the great dam (an epoch and place captured in several Chinese movies). Each feels authentic, as if Doerr really knows the landscape and the people. Is this what happens when you live in Idaho? You travel in other ways? 2. The esoterica. He's a very learn-ed writer, particularly in the sciences and engineering. Don't know if that's part of his background or just an interest. In the more successful stories he incorporates the learning into the test - the title story, for example, needs the knowledge of paleontology and neuroscience to make any sense, but at times he does seem to show off a bit with lists of esoteric items: types of trees, birds, fossils. 3. Narrative style: he likes to break things into short mosaic units, generally to very good effect, enabling him to work two or three plot lines almost simultaneously and to deftly weave the strands together (as in title story), but the small units can be a device of tic that break up the gentle flow of narrative. It was a very popular style in the 1980s but you see it less often today.