An excerpt from OR author Jane Kirkpatrick‘s July 2023 newsletter:
I got my first library card there when I was four. I remember my mom helping me choose picture books and “word books” piled like a haphazard smokestack on a counter above my eyes. I remember sitting on the floor with a book beneath that counter while my mom “checked out” whatever that meant. With pride and dignity — these were precious books after all — I carried a few to our car and my mom carried the rest. She might even have had some of her own. A world beyond our small diary farm had just opened up — as anyone who frequents libraries already knows.
[. . .] I love libraries in general. A great many readers have found my books through their local libraries. I once heard from a new fan from Missouri who said he was looking for a Stephen King novel he hadn’t read yet at his library. He’d read all on the shelf and then noticed a book with my name next to it. He fanned the pages, read a paragraph or two and decided it was worth “checking out.” He’d read them all since then. It must have been a small library though for my books to be placed in general fiction alphabetically. I love that!
Jane Kirkpatrick is a New York Times best-selling and award-winning author of over 39 books and numerous essays for over 50 publications throughout the United States including The Oregonian and Daily Guideposts. She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Romantic Times in 2012, the Caldera Achievement Award from The Nature of Words in 2006, and the Distinguished Northwest Writer award in 2005 from the Willamette Writers Association. Her many historical novels, most based on the lives of actual people, speak of timeless themes of hardiness, faith, commitment, hope, and love.
You can subscribe to Jane’s newsletter on her website.