Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.--Be Thou My Vision-Ancient Irish poem
I say it's my favorite only because I thoroughly enjoyed meeting so many new characters by the time I got to this part of the story. They seemed to just walk onto the page with such clarity, I couldn't get their descriptions down fast enough! I kept going back to fill in the details, hair, eyes, size and shape, once they'd been introduced. And they were all over the place, from London to the remote backwoods of the Blue Ridge, in New York City and of course, still a gleam in their father's eye. This turned out to be a book about discovery, about growth and lessons to be learned. Much like Stani and Emily's life at this point, things moved far and fast, people came and went, and I was carried along on the ride.
The book covers less than twelve months in the first year of a marriage, during which Stani and Emily go from being newlyweds to parents while enduring the usual tests and challenges involved in adjusting to a shared life. We've all had years like that, when life came at us fast and furious enough to blur the memories and leave us grateful for those relatively uneventful years in between. Writing about such a time is exciting and the work takes on much the same pace. Introducing two very important new characters, turning my lovers into parents, and moving ahead with several secondary story lines kept me on my toes, too. Readers have called it "sweet" and described how they felt they'd become part of this family. I especially enjoyed the children, something I'd never written about. This book makes me smile, much as the thought of my grandchildren can do.
I dedicated Heart of My Own Heart to Mary Ruderhausen because if not for this amazing teacher and friend, I would not have held on to the dream of writing for so long. Mrs. Rudy encouraged me to write when I was barely a teenager, mentoring me all through high school and beyond, when what I had to show her at the time was frankly awful. But she never discouraged any of her students from reaching for the unseen, and she sowed dreams of discovery and adventure in every classroom, sending us out to places far beyond the limits of our safe little world. She said she believed that one day I would be a writer, and through the years I never forgot that, because if someone like Mrs. Rudy saw something in me, although I couldn't at the time, then it was just possible it was really there.
Heart of My Own Heart is available for Kindle and in paperback from Amazon.com. I hope you'll join Emily and Stani as "lives are touched, futures are altered and above all miracles abound."
What a truly touching story, Karen.
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