My friend Carolyn Twede Frank is publishing her first novel today! Hooray! Promises is about a young girl named Hattie who has to move to a tiny town:

Hattie is barely twelve when her pa’s “business adventures” disrupt her family and move them to the new town of Tropic, nestled in the shadows of old Ebenezer Bryce’s Canyon. Her pa views the town as opportunity. Hattie is hopelessly shy and views it with apprehension; she dreads the task of making new friends. More than anything else, Hattie wants to be like her father—not afraid of meeting new people, talking to strangers, and standing up for herself. So it is with trepidation that she accepts her pa’s challenge and promises to make new friends.

Hattie forms more promises as she struggles to make friends, finding companionship in places she wouldn’t have expected and learning that there is a difference between complaining and standing up for oneself.

Drawn from the memoirs of early Utah settlers, Promises is a heartwarming story of friendship with a touch of mystery and adventure set in the days before Bryce Canyon became a national park.

Carolyn has a great idea to tie the entries in her blog tour together: having us write about promises, too! After reading about her book, I keep thinking about the promises one of my ancestors made. Along with his family, Christian Emil Nielsen joined a new faith in Denmark in the 1850s, when he was about the same age as Hattie. Their family soon decided to immigrate to Utah to join other members of the church, so they would better be able to keep the promises they made when they were baptized.

During the journey, Christian’s father Rasmus kept a journal recording their delays and setbacks. After spending what seemed like months just getting from Denmark to Britain, they finally crossed the Atlantic, and into the Gulf of Mexico. They transferred to a steamship to sail up the Mississippi River. Just past New Orleans, a serious illness swept through the passengers (cholera, if you’d like to know). Rasmus wrote that his wife had begun to show the symptoms.

The next day, Christian took over keeping the journal: both of his parents had died. But with the help of a family friend, Christian and his surviving siblings crossed the plains and arrived in Utah. Christian spent the rest of his life living true to the promises he’d made to God, serving him by helping to tame the wilderness wherever he was assigned.

Read more personal stories about promises on each day of her blog tour!

You can also enter to win a full-sized puppet stage and puppets, value of $290 by participating in Carolyn’s blog tour giveaway. Check out her website or blog for more details.

---

Carolyn is co-launching her book, Promises, along with Cindy M. Hogan’s Protected, a sequel to Watched. This is one I’m looking forward to, too! A little about Protected:

Christy has the guy. The terrorists have been taken care of, and she has a shot at becoming popular. Life is GREAT! Until they find her. Now she must run and leave behind everything she knows, including herself.

You can follow Cindy’s full blog tour here.

Good luck and happy book birthday, Carolyn & Cindy!