Whispers Through Time follows a successful writer whose life is upended when a former lover reappears with a stack of photographs and a secret about her origins, leading her on a journey of cultural identity and into a decades-old mystery surrounding the American Indian Movement. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

The inspiration for Whispers Through Time came from a trip my husband, Kevin, and I made in 2000 to South Dakota, which is a truly magical state. While there, we visited, among other historical places, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the Wounded Knee Memorial, and the American Indian Movement (AIM) Museum, which commemorated AIM’s 1973 Occupation of Wounded Knee. As I stood beside the Wounded Knee Creek, near where the original massacre had occurred, I had a strange, empathic experience that changed my life…and gave me the most important kernel of truth to build on in Whispers Through Time: Heroine Sierra Masters learns that through her newly-discovered Lakota maternal bloodline, she can receive visions that help her ‘see’ historical mysteries and solve them.

The supporting characters in this novel were intriguing and well-developed. Who was your favorite character to write for?

That’s a really hard question because I love them all, but I think – outside of Sierra Masters – my favorite character to write had to be Nathan Winterhawk. He was based on several Lakota elders I met while on our vacation, or have followed over the years. He came to life immediately. His humor and optimism were interspersed with his love of tradition, and his right-below-the-surface, always-simmering rage was almost eerie in its truth. His dialogue and unusual way of expressing his feelings wrote themselves, as did his compassion for Sierra’s situation. He was certainly the easiest character to write because I felt like I knew him intimately after 20 years of research.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

These are really great questions – thank you so much! More than anything else, I wanted to tell a really great story.

But I also wanted to show both sides of the White/Indian conflict over the centuries and to explore the vantage point of both ethnicities, from a historical view as well as from the White, without making the novel a political commentary of left vs. right. I think we’ve had enough of that. I also wanted to illuminate to people of all races across the US and the rest of the world the truth about the 1973 Occupation of Wounded Knee, and what AIM was trying to illustrate by taking it over. Finally, I wanted to create a real, honest-to-God love story between a man and a woman that was long-lasting with real heartache that had occurred many years earlier, but still affected them now.

When will Book Two be available? Can you give us an idea of where that book will take readers?

I’m nearly finished with the first draft of Journey of the Heart, Book Two of the Whispers Through Time series, so I don’t know at this time when it will be out. It will take readers into Comanche Indian territory on the Llano Estacado of Texas, a centuries-old treasure hidden in a canyon located on a Panhandle ranch belonging to Sierra’s best friend’s grandfather, and the final truth about a young girl with red-gold hair captured by Comanches during the 1860s.

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