A Spot of Story Episode 16 | Echoes of History: The Setting Inspiration of Eyewitness Sketch
Echoes of History
The Setting Inspiration of Eyewitness Sketch
Episode 16
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Below, you'll find the full transcript of today’s episode, in case you prefer to read or want to reference something we talked about.
About Eyewitness Sketch

Finding love at Death's Door might destroy them both.
CHICAGO, Ill., 1931—Gabriella Salatino, an illustrative journalist for the Di Stasio Giornaliste Agency, never planned to return to her island home at the tip of Wisconsin's Door Peninsula. Nor did she plan to witness a murder. But when her life is threatened, she has no choice but to hide out under the protective care of the man she left behind.
Deputy Andri Jóhannsson has been coming to Gabby's rescue his entire life, but having her in his secluded home tests the limits of his patience. The woman has no sense of self-preservation, and he has a smuggling ring to ferret out. Except, her skill with sketchpad and pencils might be the very investigative tool he needs in order to catch the bootleggers.
With a murderer on her trail and criminals evading detection, Gabriella and Andri must set aside the past or risk its eruption. Because this time, the collateral damage might include more than losing their friendship. It might cost them the lives of those they love.
La Verità con Integrità. Truth with Integrity. The Legacy of a (Girl) Stunt Reporter.
About Danielle Grandinetti
Danielle Grandinetti writes award-winning 1930s historical romance filled with mystery, suspense, and hope. She is a second-generation Italian-American rooted in Midwest traditions. Fueled by tea, books, and the creative beauty of nature, her stories explore love and belonging in hard times. Find her online at daniellegrandinetti.com.
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Transcript
Welcome to A Spot of Story with Danielle Grandinetti. Cozy up with your favorite beverage as we chat about sweet romance, thrilling suspense, and fascinating history. Perhaps you'll find your next read in one of these stories.
Danielle Grandinetti: On this episode of A Spot of Story: Echoes of History, we are stepping back into the 1930s to explore the inspiration behind the setting of Eyewitness Sketch. Eyewitness Sketch is the first book in my Di Stasio Giornaliste Agency series, a 1930s historical romantic mystery series. Eyewitness Sketch is about finding love at Death's Door, and Death's Door is exactly what we're going to explore today.
Eyewitness Sketch follows Gabriella Salatino, an illustrative journalist for the Di Stasio Giornaliste Agency. She never planned to return to her home island at the tip of Wisconsin's Door Peninsula, nor did she plan to witness a murder. But when her life is threatened, she has no choice but to hide out under the protective care of the man she left behind.
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With a murder on her trail and criminals evading detection, Gabriella and Andri must set aside the past or risk its eruption, because this time the collateral damage might include more than losing their friendship. It might cost them the lives of those they love.
I am excited to talk about the inspiration here. If you look at the state of Wisconsin, you'll see along the Lake Michigan shore this little bit of land that juts out into the lake and creates the separation between Lake Michigan and Green Bay. That particular peninsula is called the Door Peninsula, and at its tip is an island called Washington Island. The water between Washington Island and the mainland of the peninsula is called Death's Door.
Now, Death's Door is called Porte des Morts. It's a French term, literally meaning "Death's Door." The reason it was called that is because of the number of shipwrecks that often happened there. It was a very dangerous passing that ships would have to go through when they went from Lake Michigan to Green Bay. According to Washington Island's history, prior to modern navigation aids, hundreds of ships floundered around Death's Door because of the landscape and the rocks.
To combat that in the late 1800s, shipbuilders pushed to have a canal built at the base of the Door Peninsula around Sturgeon Bay that led from Lake Michigan straight to Green Bay. That allowed them to bypass the dangerous passage of Death's Door. They finished that man-made canal in the late 1800s, but that doesn't mean that Death's Door was any less dangerous; there just were fewer ships that would take that particular route.
So, as I was exploring where to set my particular story, knowing that there weren't as many shipwrecks up at the tip of Door County lessened a little bit of the danger, but it didn't mean that there wasn't danger there. It was just too much of a perfect place to set my little town.
Another aspect of why I wanted to set it on the Door Peninsula was because of a little town called Ephraim. Ephraim is on the bay side of the peninsula and it is known as being the last dry town in Wisconsin. In fact, Ephraim, Wisconsin, didn't lose its dry town status until 2016—almost 90 years after Prohibition ended.
What went on to create a town that stayed dry so long and that fought against Prohibition in a state where they stopped enforcing Prohibition well before it actually ended? How did a town in a state that wanted to support its alcohol industry stay dry so long?
I didn't want to use a real place because I wanted to create my own dynamics and challenges within a town. So, this little town provided the "what if" question that allowed me to branch off and create this particular story. I wanted to honor Ephraim's history and give that respectful nod toward Ephraim and its Norwegian heritage by naming my little town after a Norwegian word. Heima is a Norwegian word for home. It's also Icelandic for "at home" or "home again."
Washington Island, for example, has a very strong Icelandic background, and I wanted to honor that by using the term Heima as the name of my town. I also gave my characters Norwegian or Icelandic names. I didn't use the Swedish spelling; I used the Norwegian or the Icelandic spelling to provide that connection, whether for Andri Jóhannsson, his father the Reverend Jóhannsson, or his boss Chief Mickelson. I wanted to create that connection to the real-life cultural heritage that was there.
One aspect that I didn't include in this particular story was the Native American history. It changed hands among Native American communities before and after the Northern European immigrants arrived. It's complicated and complex, and not without its racial challenges. If you would like to learn more about that history, I would strongly encourage you to dig into it a little bit more.
If there was a nod to it at all, I chose to do it in a way that I could speak to as a second-generation Italian-American. My heroine is Italian and is very different looking than all the blonde, blue-eyed Northern Europeans on this island.
Back to the setting, though. Washington Island is the big island that is across the Death's Door strait. There are a couple of islands in that strait, one of which is Plum Island and the other is Pilot Island. I chose to use Pilot Island as my model for Heima Island to create my own little island that had its own culture, so I didn't misrepresent any history for these real-life places.
I based the lighthouse that appears in this particular story off the Pilot Island Lighthouse. You will want to make a note to look for a future book that will be featuring that particular lighthouse. There's a bit of an Easter egg in Eyewitness Sketch. Follow my book news to learn more about that, because that book is not even public knowledge as of this recording.
This particular community that I created is a very religious community. Because of that, they were very pro-Prohibition; they wanted to maintain this dry community. However, Prohibition was not enforced, and so bootleggers in Chicago would run their illegal alcohol through Wisconsin. Shipping by boat was a whole lot easier if you're trying to get bootlegged alcohol down from Canada. Death's Door was the perfect stopping point—or so my imagination created—which is why Heima Island had a smuggling problem in my book.
Deputy Jóhannsson was attempting to uncover who the bootleggers were. This was something that he had to enforce as law enforcement in this particular town. I wanted to explore some of those emotions as well because state officials weren't policing this anymore, but at the town level, he had to. His father was also the reverend who was one of the staunch supporters of Prohibition, which added a fun layer of family dynamics to this story.
The heroine is a sketch artist from Chicago who was originally from this island, and she and Andri were childhood friends. She uses her skill as an illustrative journalist to help sketch the crime scenes that Andri comes across in the course of his investigation.
I will leave the rest for the story so you can see how it works out, but the history of the island and how the inspiration of the area created my fictional island is what I wanted to focus on today. I hope that it will inspire you to dig into some of the history behind real places like Ephraim and Washington Island, the entirety of the Door Peninsula including places like Gills Rock, Ellison Bay, or even Sturgeon Bay.
I love exploring geographical history and using that in a book to allow the land itself to inform the story and provide that extra layer of both historical significance and cultural inspiration. Thank you for tuning in for this journey into the past. You can find additional resources in my show notes on my website, including links to the history behind Ephraim or Washington Island, or just to learn more about how you could visit Door County. It is absolutely gorgeous. And if you can't visit in person, I hope you'll take a chance and visit through a book by visiting Heima Island in Eyewitness Sketch.
Thank you for listening to A Spot of Story with Danielle Grandinetti. We hope you enjoy today's conversation. Let us know by leaving a comment below and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Discover more information about today's book by visiting A Spot of Story onlin
To make this story accessible to everyone, an AI-assisted transcript is provided above. It has been edited for clarity to ensure it captures the heart of our conversation.
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~ Danielle.







