Hello! I’m Tori Whitaker, and A MATTER OF HAPPINESS is my second novel that shifts between the past and present. It’s the story of two fiercely independent women born a century apart and the cherished heirloom that connects them. So let’s play along with the title challenge game and see what more we can learn!   A  is for the adventurous main character in the historical thread. It’s 1920 and Violet is 19, craving to live independently, buy a car of her own, travel, and answer to no one. When she loses her clerical job at a Kentucky distillery, she’s off to Detroit, the fastest-growing city in America, for work in the motor car boom.     M   is for Melanie, Violet’s headstrong great-great-great niece. In 2018, she’s a rising star in a Kentucky bourbon distillery and has inherited Violet’s faded red automobile that’s stored in a crumbling carriage house.   A   is for automobile—Violet’s 1923 Jordan MX convertible. Melanie discovers a journal hidden in the car that reveals the surprising wild side of Violet in the roaring twenties.   T   is for tasting. If you’re gonna sip bourbon, it’s all about the “nose” (smell) and the taste, which can…

Jen: What inspired you to write Millicent Glenn’s Last Wish? Tori: When I was around five years old, I was at a big family reunion and overheard some older, distant cousins allude to the tragedy that I’ve fictionalized here. That mental vision of what happened stayed with me throughout my life. Years after the woman who was involved had already passed, I asked three people close to her if she’d ever spoken about it. They each said they’d had but one conversation in all the time they’d known he–—and they each had a different detail to share with me. I took those few details and built a whole story around them. The novel is set in two time periods. How much research was needed in order for the story to ring true with readers? I began with a sweeping search for information about the late-WWII years and early 1950s. Besides learning about fashion, media, foods and so forth, I discovered things like the need for prefabricated houses for growing families, and I wove that into my story. I read accounts written from women of the period, too–some of whom felt confined in their suburban homes and by a society that…