THE LOST VALENTINE
&
Special Announcement
"I just finished reading The Last Valentine for the 4th time and I love it! I am homebound and I have read 1,215 books since Oct. 1990. It is just great, great work, and #1 on my list! God bless!" ~Vera Bradley
A Love Story and The Bestsellers
After 25 years I own the publishing rights to ALL of my authored works; but most especially to my original bestselling title made famous by HALLMARK HALL OF FAME, The Lost Valentine!
The original title was The Last Valentine, first published in hardcover and soft, along with audio, book club, large print, and foreign language copies.
TIME TRAVEL -- BACKSTORY
THE LAST VALENTINE was inspired by the re-telling of my mother's waiting for my father to return from war in 1944. It first premiered 13 years after its initial debut, as a Hallmark Hall of Fame World Movie Event through the CBS Movie of the Week on January 31, 2011. I never realized that it would be playing two decades later, and receiving the same fan reaction it did when it was first published in 1998.
Perhaps what makes it so special is that we feel a longing for a romantic generation's experiences; one who showed us how to love. Separated by a 4 year-long World War, they revealed their youth to us; those who lived 1941 through 1945 years in uniform and those at home waiting. In that youth, we saw their hopes, dreams, and eagerness to come back home to what mattered most. We feel an attachment to them because those emotions are the most basic and human and worth living for; even dying for as far too many did. My Dad is 2nd from left in the back row in the photo below. The tall man next to him was his best friend, Joe Landry, who didn't make it back home. Now...
...almost all of that generation is gone. But, in their youth, we sense something about our own desires; a certain something else the world seems to have lost; enduring passion for one other person, and innocence we can’t quite put our fingers on.
Does the feeling for another ever grow old? Can memories be erased? Can the beating of hearts in youth grow fonder over time? And what does their sacrifice in this story, along with the meaning of a rose, and the last Valentine's remembrance found in my novel's story bring to each of us? I think the story brings sacred feelings, and there is only one word ever invented for those: Love.
As mentioned above, The Last Valentine was inspired by the story of my mother Virginia, waiting for my father to come home after he had been away for two-and-one-half years overseas in conflict against Hitler-controlled Nazi Germany and Mussolini-fascist-run Italy.
She waited at the Los Angeles, California Union Station train terminal for three days after receiving a telegram that my father had just hit the east coast after spending 1942-1944 with the First Armored Division in such places as Kasserine Pass and other battlefields of North Africa. Then four months of hell in battle-torn Anzio before the final breakout to Rome Italy, which had left all of the original men exhausted, battled fatigued, and probably with PTSD; which back then they called "Shell Shock." The photo below shows a truck and soldiers on the road to Rome after the Anzio break-out. My father drove a supply truck, and took ammo, supplies, and men to and from the front lines; always a target, "...but a moving one" he would joke. Perhaps behind the wheel in this photo is the gentle man I still call "Dad."
He came home, but hardly ever talked of the war, except when I pressed him. When he lay dying, with minutes to live, I reminded him that he would be having a joyous reunion with best friends killed in the war; Murr Skousen, and Joe Landry (a name used for a character in The Lighthouse Keeper). I told him how well he had done with his family of 10 children. We loved him. He was gentle. He worked his guts out for us. But before that, he fought for us and loved us from birth until death. This moment of his transition into eternity was a "pre-author" day for me, but I was determined to honor him somehow.
So, it was late 1944 and after almost 3 years, he was coming home to his "Darling Virginia." And she couldn't wait. Those were days of Telegrams and not that many phone booths. So she decided to simply go to the train station every day until she saw him walk down the ramp at Track #12.
Trains were the main transportation for troops within our country. Airports were not invented for mass travel yet. Rail lines meant train stations like Union Train Station where The Lost Valentine adventure, in both the book and Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, begins and the final conclusion to the story wraps.
World War and Present Day: All my novels and protagonists move between the past and present day. Duel romances blossom as lessons are learned through ancestors from a prior generation. In the special document and podcast, I will detail some true personal experiences and influences that helped create the settings, the characters, and war history of not only The Last Valentine (1998) but also The Lighthouse Keeper (1999) Ticket Home (2,000) and my final World War Two romance story, When the Last Leaf Falls (2023).
25th YEAR CELEBRATION
