A Diary’s House

Genre: Historical Romance, Coming of Age

Author: C. David Murphy

Purchase: Amazon/Smashwords/Barnsnoble

More Reviews: On Goodreads

Source: Promotional Book Tours

Synopsis of A Diary’s House

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.

Excerpt of A Diary’s House

An Observation From Heaven’s Peak

‘May 30, 1830. I have come to observe the brightest star perhaps on these mountains. To think, that from all my travels, that nothing more could be seen anew. I have come to find a treasure of a sight today; a jewel that even would make queens swoon with envy. The travel to it is far from long. A gradual climb through a narrow passageway that could be easily mistook as another long line of heavily dense forests. Strange that I did follow a deer through it till the way caught my attention, and I hiked into this gradual elevation.

I saw past all the bushy and high foliage trees, the mountain rose from the base floor below. The climb was no more to me than a half-hour trip onto the summit, and nothing to break wind about. But as the bush-heads cleared and the summit sat in front of me; oh what a marvel I saw! The lands grew into a massive garden of cliffs and trees and flowers. To my left there ranged high into the heavens, sheer rock cliffs as smooth as mica on a sunlit day. The heights appeared to pierce the blue-heart skies above.

The view exposed all about me and in every direction where I could see the sun perch from sunrise to sunset. The distance stretched as long as a weeks’ ride in carriage, in the least; perhaps more. The carpet of vibrant green and bushing sprout imagery, does so bend and roll till the mountains run into infinity; there, fading where the sight could see no further on them.

I had never seen a beauty as this and I felt the door of Heaven must be sitting somewhere on this summit porch. I moved about the mountaintop with its tip so like a flat plain, and I viewed every vantage point imaginable. On the right side, where the elevation took me to its highest point, I could see directly below me two thousand feet down to the forest valley below. The tall timbers were like tiny twigs with green heads on them, or broccoli sprouts in full bloom. To my left, and just below where I stood, more sheer rock cliffs rose from the basin floor and stretched to near the highest part of this mountain.

I saw the falcons roam with out-stretched wings throughout this arena. They drifted in and out of those causal breezes as though they were caught up in a continuous, gentle wave of air. They nearly seemed to lay still in the atmosphere like a good lullaby my mother used to sing to me; never-ending in that beautiful and insightful chord. But they would drift so softly and cry out with a chanting echo which reached to me. It would bounce further on down in the valley below. One after another rode the solitude winds, in and out of those cliffs.

Very sparse throughout, timbers grew from the cliff walls there. I could see a whole garden of wild flowers in bloom and on display, in a small area, about midway down on the mountaintop where the mountains rolled on by in their most prominent verse. I sat there in the midst of those pedals and sweet smells for many hours this day, and I watched every breeze pass by me, then swim down into this forest of incredible beauty.

The sun watched me along the hours until the slow fade brought it to rest on the longest mountain in the west. I saw the sky sparkle from Heaven blue to sparkling red there, where the embers of the sun lit all passing clouds into small fireballs of hue.

This is where silence and peace must have been born. I will return here often and see as many days come to dawn as they will go to sunset. I am to mark the trail as I return home, as to make no mistake about how to return to this special place once more. I feel a sense of envy though that I could not become a wildflower born on this mountain tip, and so live the full season of spring and summer here. And in the autumn I begin to sleep and retire here until I am reborn in the following spring. I believe I would exchange a whole lifetime full of experiences for it to be so with me.’