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Diary Secrets
During the Civil War, Charlotte Rose Frazier, a young girl from an old Virginia family, escapes with her learning disabled brother from their centuries-old Tidewater Virginia home. An elderly abolitionist invites the two children to live with her. Charlotte rebuilds her life, eventually finding love and a stable home on the New Jersey shore. The years pass happily for Charlotte and she regains ownership of her family homestead, bequeathing it and her diary to her beloved grandson, Ken Lawe. Ken takes on the unknown, relocating back to Virginia to claim the deserted family homestead. It is there that his grandmother's deepest secrets await his arrival. This sweeping epic begins after World War II and flashes back to events during the Civil War. Can an old Civil War diary change the future? About the J.B. DiNizo describes herself as a Civil War buff and a devoted fan of President Abraham Lincoln. She is also fascinated with people and how they live their lives. A retired librarian, she lives on the New Jersey shore with her family and is writing her next book about the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Publisher's //www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/titl...
146 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 27, 2012
Honestly, I wasn’t excited about reviewing this book. To use a biblical expression, “I girded my loins about me” preparing to have to bear it. I was so wrong!! Diary Secrets is, simply put, a tiny epic. I know the words “tiny” and “epic” are incongruous with each other; nevertheless, they are appropriate for this book. Diary Secrets is only 138 pages but covers several decades following the history of a family whose roots are planted along the shores of the Rappahannock River of eastern Virginia. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Like the opening of a dramatic movie, Diary Secrets opens with Lieutenant Kenneth Lawe fighting in northeast France during WWII. He returns home wounded and blooded; physically and mentally. But he has a not so secret weapon to help him with every step of his recovery, his family. From the moment he is returned to his home community, Kenneth is surrounded and supported by his family. A couple of surgeries and a few months later, Kenneth is really home; on the porch of his family’s seaside hotel and home. It’s at this point that Kenneth is finally given the bequest of his beloved grandmother, Charlotte. Unlike the insurance policies left to his sister, Kenneth is left the deed to Charlotte’s family’s home in Virginia and her diary of secrets. Both gifts are battered and old, the old Virginia home having been abandoned for long years.
Kenneth eventually moves to Virginia and rebuilds his ancestral home but it’s the diary that drives the story, linking places and people like the center spoke of a pinwheel. Generations live and die in Simon’s Landing, the home that Kenneth restores along the shores of the Rappahannock River. Simon’s landing has been the sight of unspeakable evils and bone penetrating love.
Diary Secrets sometimes moves forward in leaps taking the reader to events and times, but J. B. DiNizo moves the story along without confusion. This book is packed with interesting characters and historical events. J.B. DiNizo has painted a story with sweeping brush strokes on a small canvas. Read this book! You don’t want to miss this one!!!
Reviewed by:
Sallie Lundy-Frommer
Author of Yesterday's Daughter
Like the opening of a dramatic movie, Diary Secrets opens with Lieutenant Kenneth Lawe fighting in northeast France during WWII. He returns home wounded and blooded; physically and mentally. But he has a not so secret weapon to help him with every step of his recovery, his family. From the moment he is returned to his home community, Kenneth is surrounded and supported by his family. A couple of surgeries and a few months later, Kenneth is really home; on the porch of his family’s seaside hotel and home. It’s at this point that Kenneth is finally given the bequest of his beloved grandmother, Charlotte. Unlike the insurance policies left to his sister, Kenneth is left the deed to Charlotte’s family’s home in Virginia and her diary of secrets. Both gifts are battered and old, the old Virginia home having been abandoned for long years.
Kenneth eventually moves to Virginia and rebuilds his ancestral home but it’s the diary that drives the story, linking places and people like the center spoke of a pinwheel. Generations live and die in Simon’s Landing, the home that Kenneth restores along the shores of the Rappahannock River. Simon’s landing has been the sight of unspeakable evils and bone penetrating love.
Diary Secrets sometimes moves forward in leaps taking the reader to events and times, but J. B. DiNizo moves the story along without confusion. This book is packed with interesting characters and historical events. J.B. DiNizo has painted a story with sweeping brush strokes on a small canvas. Read this book! You don’t want to miss this one!!!
Reviewed by:
Sallie Lundy-Frommer
Author of Yesterday's Daughter
June 2, 2011
What a great book of the circle of life, is how I regarded it. A warm book while having some pain in it. I enjoyed it. I didn't think at first I was going to, but then it just pulled me and kept me going wondering how it was going to wrap itself up. I love that Ken took over the old estate and then from then on it was in the family. Loved it! *I even stayed awake last night to finish it cause i was that close to being done lol*
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews