BACK HISTORY: Gables of Legacy, Volume IV: An Eternal Bond

Gables of Legacy, Volume IV:
An Eternal Bond

Featured Song: “With Arms Wide Open” by Creed

This song actually came up in the previous book, but its message flows into this one. This is one of many songs I learned to love through my children, because this was one of my son’s favorite songs when it came out. It’s a little “hard” sounding, but the lyrics are beautiful. This song expresses Jess’s joy in learning that he was going to be a father. And that “hard” feeling in the music captures his personality in a way.

For the record, I hate the title of this book and it was changed without my knowledge. This is when I put my foot down and asked for more input, and they’ve been much better about at least consulting me on title changes since then. My working title was “A Gilded World.” There’s a line of poetry in the front of the book which includes this phrase. My idea with the series was that each title would have a lovely “G” word in it to work as alliteration with the “Gables” series. That was nixed on the previous volume when my idea of “Going Home” was nixed for “The Silver Linings,” which I didn’t like either. On this book, the committee argued that no one would know what “gilded” meant. I said they would by the end of the book. Oh well, I learned a long time ago that it doesn’t matter so much what the title is as what’s inside.

In this story, Jess is struggling to come to terms with his father’s death and he doesn’t feel worthy of all that’s been left to him. He’s inherited wealth, but he’s also inherited a great deal of responsibility. Jess and Tamra are confronted with an immense number of challenges. This book exemplifies the theory of “When it rains it pours.” One of the revision suggestions was that there were too many trials in this book, that it wasn’t realistic, and I needed to tone it down. I told them I knew a number of people who could testify that it WAS realistic. It was one of those cases when truth was stranger than fiction, even if it was based in a simple principle. But I always wanted my fiction to have a realistic edge. Sometimes people are hit with so much all at once that they don’t know how to cope. They let me keep all of the trials and struggles in tact, and Jess and Tamra came through in the end, better and stronger for having endured them well. Now THAT is a great life lesson.