Author Spotlight on Naomi Musch

Hello, friends! Welcome to my wilderness! That greeting puts a lot of my writing into a nutshell because I like to write my stories with settings in wilderness or rural areas. Some works are set in small towns, but I usually stay clear of the big cities, mainly because I've never been a city girl, and I don't think I could write about city living authentically. I'm a country gal through and through! The picture on my banner is from the edge of my yard. It's quite literally "the back forty".

My love of history is heavily influenced by stories of the colonial frontier--of the frontiersmen, explorers, trappers, traders, and indigenous people who populated the land in the central and upper parts of our country over 200 years ago. I always figured that most of my stories would be set in the Revolutionary or pre-Revolutionary period. Alas, I could never have imagined I’d eventually be writing stories from that time all the way up to post WWII! May I introduce you to my writing journey over several periods of history?

My first published series was set during the mid-late 1800s in Wisconsin. The Empire in Pine series chronicles the rise of the logging and railroad era via a family saga of three generations of women who experience the adventure and romance of the period. It's a mix of historical women's fiction that contains romantic threads and redemptive themes. Titles include The Green Veil, The Red Fury, and The Black Rose, and they are best read in order.

It was easy going back to my Empire in Pine research when I recently wrote a lighter romance called Not for Love, just released in Barbour’s new Lumberjacks & Ladies novella collection. In that story, a young widow writes a letter to the lumber camps in search of a man willing to marry her and act as a husband "in name only" to help her keep and run the farm she started to build with her deceased husband. 

Lumberjacks & Ladies is my first book available on audio. What a thrill!

 

After my Empire in Pine series, I went back to writing a story which had long lived on my heart: Mist O’er the Voyageur. It’s a story that takes place in my beloved Lake Superior region during the fur trade--a romantic adventure between a voyageur and Metis woman who disguises herself to join a voyageur's brigade while searching for her fur-trade father in the wilderness. Now the sequel is out too: Song for the Hunter, in which Metis hunter Bemidii Marchal puts his life on the line for the love of a French woman who may reject him when she learns the devastating secret he hides.

Another story set in an even earlier period is A Tender Siege, a novella of the French and Indian war involving a Highland soldier wounded in the wilderness near Fort Pitt when it is under siege by Pontiac’s Native forces. Readers can find it in part of a collection called The Highlanders.

Then one day I got the idea for a story idea based on Genesis 29, when Jacob married Leah and later Rachel, but set in a different period. So of course I wasn’t going to write a novel about a man marrying two women, but what if, during WWI, a man—a farm hand—married one farmer’s daughter while he pined for the other? Sounds nasty, but I promise it doesn’t cross lines. It’s a story about a man and woman who God deals with in deep ways. These characters carry such deep burdens in their marriage that only the Echoes of the Heart can express them. The Deepest Sigh turned out to be one of my favorite novels. In fact, it compelled me to write a series, continuing with The Softest Breath, and The Brightest Hope. Each book tells the story of another character that comes along, and about a hero who has an involved character arc. Readers have said that people who love Francine Rivers will enjoy these books.

By the time I signed to write a story for Barbour's new Heroine’s of WWII series, I’d long since shed my notions of sticking to the colonial period—though I hope to write something set during that era again. I had some practice writing about the post-WWII era when I published The Love Coward a sweet story of second chances, and now my novel Season of My Enemy, set on a Wisconsin farm during WWII, will release in June. Literally a few days ago, Barbour pulled down the cover we’d worked on for the book and came up with a new one. I'm not 100% sure it's final even yet, so watch for the official re-reveal soon.

  

I’ve become more and more open to writing in different eras. I feel quite at home in the Americana period of the first half of the 20th century, but also in the 1800s of the upper Midwest and the rough and tumble wilderness frontier of the 1700s. I’ve even written a couple contemporaries that are a romp to spin out from time to time, though my first and biggest love is still historical. I’m not sure where it’ll all lead to next. I’m working on another possible WWI story about spies and sabotage in a Wisconsin port town. We’ll see how it goes! It’s all in God’s hands, and I’m content to leave it there.

Thanks for traveling with me down memory lane as I reflect back to writing these books. If you’re interested in these or other stories I’ve written, catch me at the usual social and bookish places. I do a monthly drawing in my newsletter Northwoods Faith & Fiction. In March I’ll be hosting a drawing for a signed copy of Song for the Hunter, so don’t miss the chance to get on board!

Until later,

Naomi  

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A Brief History of Lake Superior's Fabulous Apostle Islands (Lake Superior Pearls & Perils, Part One)

In just another month, I will be celebrating the release of Song for the Hunter, a new novel set in a place which people from all over the world have come to admire and enjoy, the magnificent Apostle Islands. The archipelago of twenty-two islands (no, not twelve!) sits off the Bayfield Peninsula, the most northern point in Wisconsin. Twenty-one of the islands as well as part of the mainland are protected by the National Park Service making the area part of the Lake Superior National Shoreline. The Apostle Islands have a vast history of culture and commerce. Let's take a short overview.

Lake Superior is truly an inland sea. It is wild and unpredictable, a blue gem covering 31,700 square miles. It averages 483 feet deep, but at its deepest point is nearly three times that at 1333 feet. By surface, it is the largest lake in the world, and it holds more water than all the other Great Lakes combined, plus three more Lake Eeries. Are you amazed yet? Having claimed hundreds of shipwrecks (including the famous Edmund Fitzgerald which sunk during a horrific storm on my 14th birthday), the lake is said to have taken more than 10,000 lives, and those are the ones history tells us about. Now consider... 

Wild Lake Superior photo courtesy of Dan Grisdale Photography

The islands have been home to the Ojibwe people for some 600 years, at least. Some say thousands. In any event, they consider these islands to be a sacred place, and commerce has traveled the lake by canoe for centuries. Then came the fur traders and voyageurs. 10,000 lives gone to a watery grave probably falls far short of the actual number, or so I would imagine.

Canoes in a Fog, Lake Superior (1869) Frances Anne Hopkins

Although Frenchman Pierre Francois Xavier de Charlevoix is credited for giving the islands their current name--purportedly either to honor Jesus' twelve apostles or to recognize the twelve largest islands--the natives place name for the islands has always been Wenabozho ominisan. Wenabozho is the name of a cultural hero who, they claim, made the islands. The Ojibwe's main village was on Madeline Island, the largest of the islands (and where the adventures in my new novel largely take place). The Ojibwe name for the island is Moningwunakauning which means "home of the yellow-breasted woodpecker". From their village there, and from other villages on the mainland, the people were able to fish all year round, hunt game and collect wild rice in the fall, gather furs in winter, collect maple syrup in the spring, and gather wild edible food all summer long.

Apostle Island Sea Caves, Image by David Hamilton from Pixabay

Europeans also found safety and refuge from Lake Superior's wild waters, as well as gathering resources among the islands. One of Wisconsin's oldest settlements is there on Madeline Island, established by Jesuit priests Claude Allouez and Jacques Marquette in the 1660s. It soon became home to a French trading post, and later when American's won the war against France, was turned over from the North West Company to American Fur Company jurisdiction. 

Historical marker located on Hwy 13 between Washburn and Bayfield WI, looking from the mainland shore toward the island.

Madeline Island, Big Bay State Part;
View from my hero's campsite in Song for the Hunter

Stories of exploration, intrigue, heroism, and intrigue abound about the region both on the water and on shore. Between the French explorers, the fur traders, the voyageurs, and the missionaries, it is a region ripe with history as well as natural beauty. And all this before we even get to the era of the Great Lakes fishing and shipping fleets! (I'll share some of these stories in future posts of Lake Superior Pearls and Perils).

I hope this wets your appetite for a look into the area or maybe a planned vacation to the islands sometime! At the very least, I hope you'll investigate my upcoming book Song for the Hunter. There is also a 2018 novel set one year prior titled Mist O'er the Voyageur.

If you have or plan to read either book, I'd be happy to send you a novelette (pdf or mobi) set between the two stories--a sort of extended epilogue to Mist and a prequel to Song called The Long-Awaited Spring. Just drop me a note with your request and an email address!

Until the next historic tale of Pearls & Perils on the lake,

Naomi

Song for the Hunter, coming January 4, 2022, pre-order available:

Wed to a trading company partner to escape life in Montreal under her harsh father's thumb, Camilla Bonnet finds herself tragically widowed and pregnant in the Upper Country frontier. When her brother fails to return for her from Fort William, she is cast on the mercy of the trading post owner's family. She also draws comfort from Bemidii Marchal, a Métis hunter who soothes away her misgivings as he finds his own refuge on Lake Superior's Madeline Island.

Bemidii’s thoughts of courting a maiden are cut short when he raises his knife against a company man at Fort William’s Great Rendezvous. No one will believe he killed to protect his sister—least of all the beautiful Frenchwoman on Madeline Island who stirs his affections—not when she learns that her brother is dead and Bemidii stands accused of his murder. As the sharp blade of truth divides them, will Bemidii survive the justice of powerful men who are a law unto themselves?

Pre-order Song for the Hunter

JOIN ME at a Christmas Extravaganza Facebook Party next week to try and win a copy of the book, not to mention a spree of other prizes!