"Elusive Dawn" Review by Writers’ Digest Magazine

I was thrilled to receive this 5 star review from Writers’ Digest Magazine:

“In Elusive Dawn, author Gabriele Wills shows talent that is anything but elusive. Her skillfully crafted scenes populated by well drawn characters will pull readers into the story and not let go until the very last page. Although this is the second book in the series, it also works as a stand-alone. I appreciate some of the extras Ms. Wills incorporated into this book, including the map, the list of characters, and the “Author’s Notes” after the story ends. The author’s passion for this story shows through her powerful descriptions, emotional turning points, and bigger-than-life setting. The cover is attractive and simply elegant.

"With a story this awesome, I’m sure fans will be looking for more from Gabriele Wills…. The story is strong and has emotional arcs in all the right places. The most important thing Ms. Wills can do now is effectively market this book.”

Which is harder than researching and writing! So marketing has been put aside until Book 3 in the series is finished.

Deadly Aftermath

It’s been 93 years since the last of the many millions of shells was fired in the Great War, but every year, farmers in France and Belgium still find dangerous munitions on their land. In Flanders fields alone, some 10,000 unexploded bombs are ploughed up each year. It’s known as the “Iron Harvest”, and farmers place their finds by the roadside for the bomb disposal units to collect. Ironically, people are still being killed by WW1 munitions. Canada’s Vimy Memorial apparently has one unexploded shell for every square metre, which is why there are fences and signs warning people not to stray off the paths.

So imagine how hazardous the devastated landscape was immediately after the war. That’s why I was surprised to discover that Michelin published tourist guides to the battlefields and cemeteries! I just read one about Ypres that was published in 1920. Illustrated with pictures of piles of rubble where villages had once stood, muddy, debris-ridden fields with water-filled shell-holes, and rough roads lined with naked, broken tree stumps, it gives detailed directions on what to see and how to get about. Some roads were not yet passable. Here’s a quote: “Beyond the cross-roads there is a confused heap of rails and broken trucks in the middle of shell-torn ground.”

It seems macabre to me to tour the battlefields when they are still raw, highly dangerous, and gruesome, as dead bodies were being discovered and recovered. Having said that, my own tour of them and the military cemeteries a few years ago was a powerful and moving experience.

The magnificent, medieval city of Ypres was virtually razed, as you can see in the 1919 photo above. Are the people standing there tourists, or citizens returning and trying to imagine rebuilding their homes and lives? Fortunately, they did, as you can see in this photo taken by my daughter.

Photo copyright Melanie Wills

Book Drum

Would you like to see what women’s bathing suits looked like a hundred years ago? Watch antique mahogany boats zipping about? Listen to popular ragtime tunes? Then visit the profile for my novel, The Summer Before the Storm, on Book Drum, which uses annotations (Bookmarks) to enhance the reading experience.

I had immense fun choosing photos, videos, and music to “illustrate” various aspects of the novel, thereby providing more depth or ancillary information. Some of these I already use in my PowerPoint presentation, “Fact in Fiction”, so I’m excited that they’re now available to the world!

As setting is an important aspect of Book Drum, my profile also becomes advertising for Muskoka, since it is the principle focus for this novel. Already one of the key people from Book Drum has commented on the “incredible setting”.

I’m planning to spend days immersed in the rich and extensive annotations of Hemingway’s, A Moveable Feast, which I’m using for my own research into 1920s Paris. So a word of warning - this site is addictive!

How do you forget?

CWGC cemetery in Etaples, France, Copyright Melanie Wills

Although the war is over when Book 3 of my Muskoka Novels begins, it lingers for many of my characters. It’s perhaps hard for us to imagine trying to rebuild lives shattered in trenches or aerial combat, and to carry on without friends, husbands, and sweethearts when life is just supposed to be beginning. Little wonder that became known as the “lost generation”.

War veterans were reluctant to talk about their horrific experiences, especially to those who weren’t there and so couldn’t really understand. Many couldn’t readjust to civilian life or were haunted by unforgettable experiences, including their own participation in the brutality. How does a young man, brought up to believe in the sanctity of life, reconcile that with his requirement to kill? The survivors often felt guilty that they didn’t lie alongside their comrades.

A few eventually wrote memoirs or thinly-disguised fiction, possibly to help exorcise the demons, leaving us with valuable insight. There’s a somewhat shocking line in Cecil Lewis’s memoir, Sagittarius Rising. As an aviator with the Royal Flying Corp (which became the RAF in 1918), he had lots of thrilling and harrowing experiences in that dangerous job where life expectancy on the front lines was about three weeks. At the end of the war, he wonders what to do with himself, saying, “I was twenty years old.”

This photo of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) cemetery at Etaples on the north coast of France can’t even begin to convey the enormity of the site or the profound sadness that you feel when walking among the nearly11,000 graves. Seeing the ages on the tombstones is heartbreaking - they are mostly young men and a few women - a Canadian nurse lies on the front right - who never had much of a chance at life. Many in Britain felt they had lost their finest young minds and potential leaders. Back home was a generation of “superfluous” women, who, outnumbering the men, would never marry and so, had to make careers for themselves. For some, the war was never really over.

Haunting and Haunted Autumn

Although I love the warmth and freedom of summer - being close to nature as you swim in the lake and walk around barefoot - there is something about autumn that speaks to my soul.  For two months we’ve been surrounded by glowing, ever-changing colours and the rich fragrance of fallen leaves that instantly conjures up memories of childhood fun. And autumn has the added thrill of Halloween, of allowing the imagination to roam into the eerie unknown, of relishing spine-tingling tales, and dressing up as witches and monks of old.

To add some seasonal spice this year, my family did a nighttime “ghost hunting tour” of Casa Loma, that fanciful baronial castle perched majestically above Toronto. With 98 rooms, it’s the largest private residence ever built in Canada, and helped to bankrupt its wealthy owner, Sir Henry Pellatt. Having spent $3.5 million already, he told his neighbour, Lady Flora Eaton, that he needed another million to finish it, which he never did. So Sir Henry and his wife didn’t have many years to enjoy their castle, and certainly didn’t die there, but they are apparently still there in spirit form. Other ghosts - servants, perhaps - scare people from top-floor rooms and prowl the long, creepy tunnel that connects the house with the stables. It was in that tunnel that something snarled menacingly in our ears - unheard by others around us.

When you gaze down the deep length of the darkened library toward the conservatory or climb up the narrow, twisting staircases to the top of the towers, or wander down shadowy passageways, it’s easy to believe that you are not alone. And reinforces for me that I never want to live in a castle. J

The Pellatts and Casa Loma are neighbours to some of my characters, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they attended a dinner or ball there, the Pellatts being renowned for entertaining regularly and lavishly. I get to join them in my imagination, and perhaps I should set it around Halloween.

For more info about Casa Loma, visit the official site.

Canadian Hero Recognized At Last!

WWI ace pilot, Lieutenant Colonel William Barker, is Canada’s most decorated hero, but how many people these days have ever heard of him? 50,000 people lined the streets of Toronto for his state funeral in 1930, a fitting tribute to one of the greatest and most respected pilots in the world. He had twice taken the Prince of Wales for a flight, once while still recovering from his near-fatal wounds, and with his shattered arm in a sling. As his biographer, Wayne Ralph, states, “He was in a very profound sense the hero’s hero, the man the other heroes held in awe.” Among those was legendary Billy Bishop, Britain’s and Canada’s top ace, who became Barker’s friend and partner after the war when they started one of the first airline services in Canada.

With their Curtiss seaplane, they were able to take passengers between Toronto harbour and the Muskoka lakes, and for sightseeing flights. Arthur Bishop, Billy’s son, told me that they often flew family and friends to Sir John Eaton’s cottage, Kawandag, on Lake Rosseau. Billy had married Sir John’s niece, and one day took her aunt, Lady Flora Eaton for a trip from the cottage to the city. This is how Lady Eaton described the flight in her memoir, Memory’s Wall:

“I sat in the open cockpit for almost 2 hours as we made our ‘lightning’ trip to the city. Jack was waiting for me at the Toronto waterfront, and never have I seen a more perturbed husband! ‘You, a mother of 5 children, risking your life in a thing like that!’ On the way up Yonge St. his driving was so erratic that I finally burst out, ‘Look dear, I may have been taking a risk when I went in the plane, but that is nothing compared to the danger I’m in right now!’ He couldn’t help laughing.”

The Bishop-Barker Company was perhaps ahead of its time, and only survived for a few years. Bishop suffered head injuries in a crash, and didn’t fly again for over a decade. He went off to Britain to make his fortune, but stayed friends with Barker and always held him in high esteem. Barker joined the fledgling RCAF, and in 1924 served as its first director. As nominal president of the young Fairchild Aircraft company, he was demonstrating a new biplane near Ottawa when he was killed in a crash. 81 years later, there will finally be a monument erected to him. See more about that here. 

Bishop and Barker appear in book 3 of my Muskoka Novels. One of my objectives in writing historical fiction is to incorporate real people whenever feasible in order to accurately portray an era. And in my own way, I pay homage to them.

If you’re interested in Barker, you’ll enjoy Wayne Ralph’s biography, William Barker VC: The Life, Death & Legend of Canada’s Most Decorated War Hero.

Muskoka is #1!

I’ve been too busy visiting and writing about Muskoka lately to have noticed that National Geographic travel editors selected it as their top destination for summer trips of 2011! Check out their website.

But why should I be surprised? The natural beauty of the area has drawn tourists and cottagers from throughout North America for well over a century. It’s inspired poetry, art, and certainly my novels, as well as others. And it’s a testament to its magic that many cottages have been in the same family for generations.

Muskoka speaks to my soul, and I truly believe in the tourism tagline “Once discovered, never forgotten”. But if you can’t get there, you can be transported to an earlier era in my Muskoka Novels. The award-winning Book 1, The Summer Before the Storm, is now also available worldwide as an e-book. Check it out on Amazon.