Gabriele Wills is the author of 6 highly acclaimed historical novels, including 4 in The Muskoka Novels saga set in North America, Britain, and Europe through the two cataclysmic World Wars and the seductive Jazz Age.

Her passion is to weave compelling stories around meticulously researched and often quirky or arcane facts in order to bring the past to life, especially with regard to women’s often forgotten contributions.

The first novel in her Muskoka Novels, The Summer Before the Storm was the “Muskoka Chautauqua Reading List Winner”

Bee: Please tell us something about Lighting The Stars that is not in the book description.

Gabriele: The novel touches on many aspects of WWII, especially obscure and less celebrated events. Having scenes firmly rooted in fact immerses readers in the time and place. So, we join two Royal Air Force officers and their sweethearts, also in uniform, at a popular London nightclub touted as being the safest place during the Blitz – until one fateful night. We fly in a Spitfire with a young female pilot when heavy clouds suddenly threaten to crush her into hills that undulate beneath.

We experience the intrusion of war on privileged summers in Muskoka lake country as training planes roar overhead - and crash; as young men and women exchange swimsuits for uniforms, while German Prisoners of War are ensconced lakeside; and as British evacuee children grow up among generous strangers thousands of miles from home and family. Although the book has a Canadian flavour, it plays out on the international stage.

Gabriele: Occasionally, the characters and their names just seem to drop out of the sky. But I do spend plenty of time researching common names of the era, and others that are more memorable and hint at personality. For instance, Merilee is a cheerful girl, popular with her many relatives and friends. Her name trips gaily off the tongue.

Some are playful, like the Seafords, who build popular boats, i.e. water “Fords”. Who wouldn’t want to be a “Wilding”, with that exciting hint of freedom? And as Merilee and her friend Peggy say in the novel, your future husband’s name should sound good with yours.

I also had to choose German and Norwegian names this time. Axel Fuchs (German for Fox) allows for amusing embarrassment for the Canadian POW camp guards. The Norwegians’ were derived from a small museum at the Muskoka Airport where they trained. There’s a plaque – sadly, all too large – that lists the names of Norwegian pilots who died in combat. I combined different first and last names so that no real person became a character. 

Sir Algernon Beauchamp – pronounced Beecham – is obviously upper crust. And Lady Sidonie (Sid) tells her daughter not to name any children after her. “I might have been less outrageous if I’d gone by my middle name Charlotte.” 

Bee: Please tell us a bit about the research that went into ‘Lighting The Star’. Did you travel for some of it?

Gabriele: I love doing research! The intriguing facts I discover inspire plot and characters. I was excited when I found out about the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) women pilots who ferried warplanes from factories to airfields in Britain, and knew that one of my plucky characters had to join them.

Many of the over 80 books I read were my bedtime reading, as I particularly enjoy memoirs. They’re well thumbed and still bristling with sticky notes. But it was a bit painful when a hardcover book landed on my face if I drifted off in the process!

I spent days in archives and museums, interviewed a few elderly people, and revelled in the enormous amount of information on the internet, including fascinating vintage media. Little wonder it took me 6 years to write this novel!

I did spend some time travelling to locations in England, and used places I had visited before. But I did that early in the process, so I would have liked to return when I had more of the story written, with new places to explore and describe. Fortunately, internet searches provided plenty of photos, including crucial historic ones.

Bee: Tell us about your cover. Did you design it yourself?

Gabriele: I chose my daughter’s compelling Muskoka photos that subtly convey the theme and, hopefully, tantalize people to look inside. A talented friend did the actual design. The look of the Muskoka series is the same, especially for the last three books, which he created, with the spine photos even lining up when placed on a bookshelf. For this one, he also did photo composites. The front cover has a dragonfly incorporated, which echoes the Spitfire he added on the back. The plane is the only image that was taken from a stock shot. 

Bee: The book feels like a love letter to Muskoka in Canada. Can you tell us about Muskoka and your personal history there?

Gabriele: You’re so right, Bee! I fell in love with Muskoka when I was invited to my friend’s island cottage at age 12. Her great-grandfather had built it in 1879. I was enthralled by the setting – the sparkling granite of the Canadian Shield, the fragrant pines, the pristine, island-dotted lakes - and the cottage culture - women and children staying for the entire summer while husbands came back on weekends and holidays. Great-aunts who had been young at the turn of the century talked about steamships dropping off Edwardian-gowned ladies and gentlemen in boater hats at the dock. Even then I thought that one day I would write a novel evoking that Age of Elegance. Which I did in Book 1, The Summer Before the Storm, contrasting that genteel time with the catastrophic Great War that decimated a generation.

Situated 100 miles north of Toronto, Muskoka has been the summer playground of affluent and powerful North Americans for well over a century. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson owned an island there. American industrialists and bankers summered (and descendants still do) in an area of Lake Muskoka known as “Little Pittsburgh” and “Millionaires’ Row” - millionaires from a century ago, that is.

I certainly believe in the tourism tagline: “Muskoka: Once Discovered, Never Forgotten”. It enchanted and inspired me, and still speaks to my soul. You can see a slideshow of photos on my WEBSITE.

Bee: What do you do when you are not writing?

Gabriele: Thinking about what I’m going to write! I have to have something creative to mull over or I get cranky. But I do enjoy gardening, reading (of course!), swimming, and dipping my feet in a lake whenever possible. I also do a lot of volunteer work in my community. But spending time with my family is paramount. 

Bee: What are you currently working on?

Gabriele: My characters are urging me to get on with their lives in another book in the Muskoka series, but I need a break to gather my thoughts around that. So, I returned to a ghostly tale I began 20 years ago, set in Muskoka at the turn of that century with flashbacks to the more distant past. I’m certainly having fun with it, partly because it reminds me of all the delightful holidays my family and I have spent at cottages and resorts in that beautiful part of our country.

Thanks so much for your interest, Bee, and for being part of the Book Tour!

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