In Marybeth Whalen’s The Guest Book (Zondervan), 5-year-old Macy Dillon exchanges drawings in a guest book of a Carolina beach house with an unidentified little boy each year they visit. Twenty-five years later, a shattered Macy hopes to find the boy who touched her heart. The idea was inspired by a reader. As Marybeth explains, “She wrote to tell me that my novel The Mailbox reminded her of being a child visiting her grandmother’s lake house. She said her grandmother kept a guest book for family members to sign after their visits. When she was too little to write, her father encouraged her to draw pictures instead. That image—of this loving father telling his daughter to draw a picture in a guest book—became the visual that led to the novel.”
