Wasilla author’s novel first in planned trilogy

WASILLA — History is where the heart is for Alaskan author Tara Willis, who made her first stab at historical fiction with a 20-chapter novel when she was just 10 years old.

Now 30, Willis had her first book published this past October, though it wasn’t the “Captured in Communist Russia” she wrote in elementary school. “Carry Me Home,” released by Oak Tree Press, was just one of 20 ideas whirling around in her head, waiting to be published, she said.

“Books pour into me from every direction,” Willis said.

Anything from a tree or a trail to an overheard conversation inspires her, as they have since she was a child in the village of Egegik — Igyagiiq, in Yup’ik — in the Bristol Bay region.

“Stories just start coming to life in your mind and turning themselves into these beautiful books that you know you have to write,” she said.

Being “a very lonely kid,” Willis would spend most of her time taking walks, reading books and doing schoolwork, soaking up all the information she could on her favorite subject: history.

“I just fell in love with finding out the different things about different cultures,” she said.

So, as a 10-year-old, she began writing about places she had never seen except in photographs and descriptions in books. She also picked up languages with ease, and with her knowledge of French, Russian, a little Spanish and a little Hebrew, the possibilities soon seemed endless.

She had just finished reading Louisa Alcott’s “Little Women” when she thought, “maybe I could be a writer.” She did as much research as she possibly could, and 20 handwritten-chapters later, she had a full-length work about the lives of characters in Stalinist Siberia on her hands.

She was just getting started.

“I had to write another one,” she said.

Willis wrote stories upon stories of minimal length about people in other places experiencing other things, but her thirst for writing another novel was insatiable.

“I really enjoyed it and it seemed like I always was writing something,” she said.

“(It was) almost an obsession. It’s my greatest love.”

When Willis was 14, she began writing what is now “Carry Me Home,” the story of a Latino girl name Celina, her Jewish mother, Mexican father and stepfather, and the struggles of rebuilding a family’s trust in each other while living in poverty.

Though there are general lessons of learning to trust, love and deal with tough situations “sprinkled throughout,” Willis said, teaching is not really the point of the book.

“There’s not some huge moral lesson that’s pounded into you,” she said. “(It) is just (about) watching the progression of Celina…moving on towards acceptance and forgiveness.”

Three years after starting work on “Carry Me Home,” Willis and her family left their 150-resident hometown and moved to Wasilla. She then began working in childcare while finishing her high school home school curriculum, and at age 19 she entered the University of Alaska in Anchorage.

That year, Willis went on a mission trip to central Russia, working with orphanages and hospitals and doing outreach. Finally, she could see, in person, the place she had written so profusely about as a young girl, and she could see the possibility of her very first work seeing the light of day with a fresh clarity.

“It totally came alive for me, (with) the experience I had (in Russia),” she said.

A few years later, Willis graduated cum laude from UAA with an associate’s in applied science degree in Early Childhood Education. She was close to obtaining a bachelor’s degree — 12 classes away — but the program required a year-long internship in the classroom, which she didn’t have time to complete, as she was also working full-time to pay her way through college.

Now, Willis works for Alaska Child and Family Services, and boosting her resume with a “bigger” degree looks more promising than ever. Willis said she will probably return to school in fall 2015, but maybe not before getting another book out.

The prequel to “Carry Me Home,” entitled “Wait Until Sunset,” is next on her list, and should be anticipated by readers sometime toward the end of next year, she said. She also is working on the sequel, “Praying for Daylight.”

Writing the books in that order, she said, was not only purposeful, but beneficial.

“That’s the beauty of writing the middle book of a trilogy: they all can stand on their own,” she said.

She also has a more sophisticated version of her elementary school piece in the works, now to be titled “Shades of Red,” and is thinking of pairing up with her aunt to write a “forbidden romance set in the Bush,” inspired by her father’s stories of being a white missionary surrounded by Alaska Native culture.

“Out there, it’s a culture all its own,” Willis said. “I’d like to open up that world to people (who)…will never be able to experience that or be part of that.”

“Carry Me Home” can be purchased on Amazon.com and directly through the publisher and author.

For more information, visit facebook.com/TlwPublishingCompany.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.