‘A Diary’s House’ – The Dedication

Many people might find this hard to believe, that a father would write a story to read to
his children even before they were born. Let alone to have the idea and impression of his
one son in mind – to create a story, a novel about his son’s imaginative adventures in a
place and world far away from our current day and time.

Intuition can have a very strong pull on the heart, and it can direct a person with the iron-
clad faith that one day, someday, such a story; a place, a home could be created for his
son’s burgeoning imagination. I knew that day would come. For many years my wife and
I tried to have a family but were never blessed with that glorious news.

Yet I still kept my duty to this book, writing its yarn and story with the ardent
imagination, I, myself was inspired to create from my own youth growing up in the
mountains of North Carolina. This novel was not about me, but about a boy; a son, who
still yet lived only in my mind and in my heart.

That is, until the day came – we were to have a child; a son – Landon.

This was to be his first year’s birthday gift. Even my wife doesn’t know this. I was going
to have the book self-published in 2009, and the very first copy with a long, glowing, and
proud letter from a father to his son which would be waiting for him when he got there.

But it was not to be…

Landon passed away at birth. That special letter turned into a dedication. A letter;
Landon’s letter which I wrote the night before he was to be buried, to be placed with him
in his final resting place.

For years I kept this book at bay, not wanting to touch it, not wanting to read it. It was
buried in the deep recesses of my mind and vacant thoughts. Yet Landon still kept
tugging at me, not wanting me to forget the present I had written so long ago, just for
him.

The future became the past, and something was lost in-between – a young child and his
life disappeared before he had a chance to live. Now, the memory still sits with me; the
long, engrossing legacy of one father’s love for his son.

Landon still yet lives – deep within the book covers of a novel ‘A Diary’s House’; and
just perhaps, for those who give it the chance to be read, he will live inside of them as
well…

C. David Murphy
Author of A Diary’s House

 

 

 A Diary’s House: Where True Love Endures

A Diary’s House is about adventure, lost love, and the hope that dreams, even those in the final years of life, can at last prevail. It is of a young boy’s attempt to become a man, the once-lost secrets of a diary, a sweeping romance which transcends time and place. It is more than a boy’s journey into manhood, but the mysteries of so many lives unknowingly intertwined, now brought together in a climatic ending; all from the engrossing world embedded in a forgotten diary; a diary of a woman.

Born in the vast and looming mountains of North Carolina during the 1870’s, Landon Hampshire always remembered the folklore and legendary tales his father told him during his early childhood; about the people of the Kituhwa (Cherokee) and the birth of this tribal nation – an enchanting story he could never forget. Incorporating the aid of an eccentric old French trapper (old man Montague), Landon and his friends set out on an adventure, their initial intention is to discover treasure and become men. But what Landon will eventually come to discover is more than he ever bargained for.

Landon didn’t realize his boyhood adventure would yield the incredible journey he ultimately experiences – going down the mysterious and mystical Randola River. At the base of the river is an island even more mysterious than the Randola itself.

The island releases many of its mysterious, yet even many more are created when Landon discovers, on the island, a diary of a young woman who lived forty years prior during the 1830’s (Trail of Tears). The diary entries are hopeful, though haunting. It reveals, in intimate detail, the life and dreams of this very special young girl who is turning into a woman of beauty and adventure, her love for a Cherokee boy, and the trials she will ultimately face. Her story unfolds through the reading of her diary, and Landon suddenly finds himself caught up in a sweeping, empowering world of re-invention and ultimate redemption.