Laurel Corona is the author of the new novel Aloha Wanderwell Takes the Wheel. Her other books include The Four Seasons. Also an educator, she lives in Victoria, British Columbia.
Q: What inspired you to write a novel based on the life of the explorer and author Aloha Wanderwell (1906-1996)?
A: I guess I’ve always been a bit of a rebel at heart, and I love stories of women who defied expectations and went off and lived an exciting life on their own terms. Aloha Wanderwell is certainly one of those.
I live in Victoria BC, and I ran across her in a little book about interesting women in Vancouver Island history. By the time I got to the end of that little three-page profile, I was hooked.
She was born Idris Hall and ran away from her French boarding school at 16, changed her name to Aloha Wanderwell, and joined the around-the-world automobile expedition of Walter Wanderwell. She became the first woman to drive around the world, which she accomplished at age 18.
She and Walter eventually married and continued their travels on an expedition driving the length of Africa, and another across South America, managing to cross the Andes in cars with engines the same size as a ride-on lawnmower today—all of this in an era where there were rarely any true roads.
After that they intended to continue their adventures by boat, but just before they were set to sail, Walter was murdered aboard their yacht, bringing to an end 10 years of travel across five continents.
But it’s not just about the travel, which was arduous, painful and often terrifying. My novel is about a teenager coming into a full realization of her power as a woman in the most remarkable of circumstances. It’s the most amazing true story and once I learned about her, I knew I had to write a book.
Q: What did you see as the right balance between fiction and history as you wrote the book?
A: There’s an ethical principle I think most historical novelists go by, and that is that historical facts should be adhered to as closely as possible. When the reader finishes a historical novel, he or she should be able to say that they know solid things about a time and place.
However, it’s obvious that much of a historical novel is invented. For example, in my first novel, The Four Seasons, I invented two girls who are abandoned as babies at the Pietà in Venice and become musicians in the orchestra and choir that Vivaldi led, and for whom he wrote much of his music.
Everything about Vivaldi, the Pietà, and life in Venice is well researched and true, but because I made up the two main characters, everything they say and do is my creation.
After the book came out, several people asked me what happened to the main characters after the book was over. This was a supreme compliment because it meant they were totally immersed in the book, but it was funny at the same time, because they weren’t “real” in the same sense Vivaldi was. I ended up saying, “Your guess is as good as mine!”
Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?
A: I come up with lots of ideas of women who would make great subjects for a historical novel but the first hurdle is there has to be at least one high quality, thorough biography. Without that, there just isn’t anything to go on.
With Aloha, I lucked out, because there is an excellent biography by Christian Fink-Jensen and Randall Eustace-Walden. So hurdle one was managed easily.
Also, this is the first book where my main character is a real person, so the story was right there in the biography. All I had to do was research as needed into things about the 1920s and early ‘30s that would be present in one way or another in the book.
I needed to learn a little about Model Ts and the innovations Walter Wanderwell made. I had to research what conditions were like in the places they traveled through, what the cities looked like, who the real life celebrities they encountered were like—all that sort of thing.
It’s still quite a lot, but in my other books I also had to dig deep into the history and culture of a place so I could figure out what plot elements would be plausible. Here that was ready-made.
As far as the story goes, Aloha continued to surprise me with her courage and determination, especially given her extreme youth. I had to keep reminding myself “she’s only 17” when she’s driving through monsoon rain across India, or “she’s only 20” when she’s facing down stampeding elephants in Africa.
As far as surprises in the writing go, I was delightfully surprised at how fun it was to have several first-person point of view characters. Sounding like a hardboiled detective in the Sam Spade or Columbo mode, and then writing from the perspective of Aloha’s younger sister, always in her shadow and quite cynical about everything, was so much fun, I think I’ll try it again.
Q: The author Michelle Moran said of the book, “This is both a breathtaking adventure and a powerful testament to the indomitable spirit of a girl who refused to let anyone else steer her life.” What do you think of that description?
A: I think it is spot on! Michelle Moran is a wonderful writer, who, like me, finds amazing forgotten or misunderstood women from all sorts of places and historical eras and writes beautifully about them. I’m not surprised she understood so clearly what I was trying to get at in this book
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am finishing up my final version of novel number six, The Intuitive, which will come out from Sibylline Press in April 2027. In a month or two it will begin the editorial process, and somewhere in there I will reach the point where I can truly say it’s finished because I can’t make any more changes.
It’s set in New York in the 1910s and ‘20s. The main character is a socialite who has lost her husband and son in an accident and is non-functional with grief.
Thinking it may help her recovery, she accepts an offer to go to Ellis Island with renowned eugenicist H.H Goddard, to assist in identifying “feebleminded” people, to deport them before (presumably) they bring inferior genes into the US.
She quickly develops moral qualms about what she has done, and in her efforts to atone for one Jewish family she broke up, she becomes aware of all the social issues her wealth has insulted her from.
The book is the story of her growth from the snobbery, bigotry, and antisemitism of her class into a remarkable woman making genuine contributions to key causes affecting women, like suffrage, unions, and birth control, and filling her life with love again. It’s a grim subject in many respects but ultimately a happy book about the power to change and grow.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: I’d like to make a pitch to your readers to remember that independent bookstores need our support if we want them to stay in business.
Especially in this time, when a few powerful entities are gobbling up the means by which we all become educated, from television news to book conglomerates, it’s increasingly important to keep your local independent bookshop in business. I always like to use the soapbox of articles like this to make this point.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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