The year 1996 was a defining moment for the Okavango Delta. The region was gripped by one of the worst droughts in living memory, leaving the normally vibrant floodplains cracked and parched. Then came an announcement that sent shockwaves through the local community: a proposed 700-kilometer water pipeline to divert water from the Okavango River system up to a critically strained Windhoek.
This high-stakes environmental showdown and the sudden activation of OKACOM (the Permanent Okavango River Basin Water Commission) serves as the intense, real-world backdrop for my upcoming romantic suspense novel, Wings over the Okavango (releasing late July!). For me, this background isn’t just a setting pulled from history books—it is a landscape I lived, breathed, and flew over myself.
A Lifetime in the Delta: Fact Meets Suspense
My connection to Botswana runs deep into my DNA. It is the country where my father was born, and by the early 1990s, I had found my own place there, working directly in the safari business as a lodge hostess. It’s an untamed world of incredible beauty, lots of surprises, and sudden danger—a world my husband also came to know intimately as he flew extensively across the region as a pilot.
But in 1996, while the diplomatic and ecological battle over the pipeline proposal was escalating, I found myself looking at the crisis from a completely unique vantage point: 250ft above the earth during daily eight-hour sorties over the delta.
The View from the Cockpit: The Low-Level Survey
During that volatile year, I'd returned to Maun and was based at Riley's Hotel (which features in 'Wings over the Okavango' as the location for a particular baddie) working as an airborne geophysical survey operator for Fugro, flying low-level water and mineral mapping contracts over the delta.
My eagle's eyrie 'office' was a daily treat as I could observe the slow-motion miracle of the Okavango's water movements, while knowing that corporate and political syndicates were battling over the right to alter this ecosystem forever.
This left an indelible mark on me.
In Wings over the Okavango, that exact pressure-cooker atmosphere comes to life. When my protagonist, Angie, returns to Maun, she isn't just navigating the turbulent currents of a second-chance romance with a daredevil bush pilot. She is dropped directly into a dangerous web of secrets, corporate greed, and old grievances, all unfolding under the shadow of the fast-approaching OKACOM deadline.
Why the Truth is More Thrilling Than Fiction
When you read a Wings over Africa novel, you are stepping into a world built on authenticity. The scent of the African bush, the sudden roar of a Kalahari lion, the adrenaline in a Cessna cockpit, and the shifting grey areas of independent aviation in Africa are all drawn from real-life experiences.
Wings over the Okavango is an emotionally charged journey about love, survival, and the lengths we go to protect our own kin beneath vast African skies. Will Angie uncover the truth before the delta's secrets turn deadly?
Ready to fly into the heart of the Delta? Wings over the Okavango (Book 2) launches at the end of July! Don't miss a single update, a sneak peek at Chapter 1, or the exact day the pre-order drops.
[CLICK HERE to Sign Up for My Newsletter with a free novel teaser at beverleysbooks.com] and join my community of adventure-loving readers today!
Or read Book one in the series: 'Whispers in the Kalahari' HERE.