Every Story is a Landmark on a Much Longer Journey
A story rarely begins where you think it does.
When I first wrote Five Miles from Hope, I thought I was telling a self-contained story about a journey. It was about a man and a woman, a perilous trail, and that final, desperate push toward a place that promised a new beginning. The story, I thought, ended when they arrived.
I could not have been more wrong.
After the final words were on the page, the characters wouldn’t leave me. The town of Hope itself began to feel less like a destination and more like a starting point. I found myself asking questions: What happens to the people who build a sanctuary? Who do their children become? What happens when their ideals are tested by a new generation, with new challenges and new dreams?
Suddenly, I realized that Five Miles from Hope wasn’t the end of a journey. It was a single, brightly lit landmark on a much longer, more complex map. It was the seed.
And from that seed, the Testaments of Hope saga was born. As a writer, there is a unique and profound excitement in realizing that you are not just telling one story, but many interconnected ones. You start to think of your books not as standalone objects on a shelf, but as points in a constellation. Each book is its own star, with its own light and its own drama, but when you step back, you see how they connect to form a much bigger picture.
- Five Miles from Hope was the story of arrival.
- The Doctor's Ledger became the story of secrets buried beneath the town's foundations.
- The Wayward Trail and The Far Horizon's Call became the stories of the next generation grappling with the legacy their parents built.
This is the heart of the Testaments of Hope series: exploring the powerful, often messy, interplay between generations. It’s about how a single moment of courage or desperation can ripple through time, shaping the lives of descendants a hundred years later. It’s about how hope is not a static place you arrive at, but a legacy that must be fought for, earned, and reimagined by every new generation.
Each novel is a window into a different era of Hope, a different set of challenges. But through them all, you will see the echo of the past—in a character’s stubborn pride, in a family's sense of duty, in the very name of the town itself.
What I thought was a single journey has become a sprawling, multi-generational epic. It’s the most exciting literary project of my life, and I am so thrilled to have you on the trail with me. The map is still being drawn, and there are so many more landmarks to discover.
Thank you for taking the first step.
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