Wisconsin Setting for Oak Lane Stable Novel Series
Photos: Canva
For those of you familiar with the middle grade Oak Lane Stable Novel Series, you are aware that the setting of the stories takes place in Southeastern Wisconsin, with travel to horse shows in other Midwestern states like Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa. I chose to do this since I am a native Wisconsin resident and quite familiar with the surrounding natural environment and its climate.
Each part of Wisconsin has a different feel to it: SE Wisconsin has the rolling hills of the Kettle Moraine, land that was shaped by glaciers and their subsequent melting over time - creating lakes, steep hills with deciduous trees covering them and open meadows for pastureland and farming. Central Wisconsin is flatter in a way, with a lot of agricultural crops grown in the rich, abundant land. Northern Wisconsin is a mass of evergreen forests and sandier soils. Each place is distinct from the other - from prairies to marshes to dense forests to shorelines.
Although people have commented on how they “know” where Oak Lane Stable is located and how it relates to my childhood, I assure you that it is only a figment of my imagination. (I actually looked at a photograph in a horse book to use as a model of the actual stable in the books.) There were a few stables in the area where I grew up, but none of them were hunter/jumper stables, or even remotely resembled the Oak Lane Stable I have used in the books. Most were small operations with only a handful of horses versus dozens of them found at riding/training/breeding stables. And there were far more Holstein dairy farms than horse farms when I was growing up.
But what I do try to replicate in the stories is the sense of place, a sense of what living in Wisconsin is (and was) like. There are extreme temperature changes (daily sometimes), four distinct seasons - often without definite beginnings and endings, and a diverse natural environment. The people are hard-working, kind, sensible, and stoic when faced with a crisis. Many of the German, Polish, Irish, and Scandinavian immigrants from the area I grew up in still have next generations living on their families’ farmsteads - properties dating back before Wisconsin became a state in 1848. There is a sense of being rooted here - to this place I still call home.
Photo: Canva
