Please allow me to introduce my book . . .

The Door is a middle-grade historical fantasy written for both boys and girls. The novel teaches resilience, compassion, and acceptance. While this book is best suited for fourth and fifth grade readers, children (and adults!) of any age are sure to enjoy.

Niall's mother is young and frail, and she holds her baby close as she walks slowly down cobblestoned streets. She holds him with all the sadness that such a parting must bring.

She lays him gently on the stone steps of a small church, and she watches as he clutches her finger, so fiercely. She sings to him,

On the wings of the wind o'er the dark rolling deep

Angels are coming to watch o'er thy sleep

Angels are coming to watch over thee

So list to the wind coming over the sea

Hear the wind blow love, hear the wind blow

Lean your head over and hear the wind blow . . .

She wishes she knew how to write—there is so much she would want her son to know. She would want him to know how dearly she loved him; how she loved his small nose and the scent of his baby breath and his eyes that looked so like the eyes of his father who died and left her with nothing.

But she cannot write, so instead she places a small ring inside his blanket. It is a simple ring, made of copper, not gold, but it was the ring that her husband gave her on the day that they married. It is all that she has, and so she gives what she has to her son.

Then she turns, and she runs, because she is afraid that if she does not run she will go back. And as she runs she whispers a prayer, a sort of blessing, “May he grow strong in the Lord just as Samson and David and Elijah did. And may he find happiness in this life.”

No one knows exactly what became of this mother, and so her story cannot be told—but there are some that say she never stopped praying for her son that she laid on the steps of a church.

TEASER!

She glanced up, and her eye happened to fall on one of the doors across the room. The one Ms. Elswood hadn’t opened. It was a door, a perfectly normal door, and there was no particular reason why she should feel so gently drawn to it. And yet -- she was. She had noticed the way her foster mother had passed by the door without a word and opened the closet door instead. And now that she was alone in the room, it seemed a rather conspicuous thing to avoid commenting on that door, and she felt its gentle pull on her growing stronger.

She moved softly towards it. The hinges were rusty and the knob turned with difficulty, as though it hadn’t been opened in a long time. It took more force than she had expected to yank it open, but when she did, it sprang back with a harsh grating sound. She stumbled back a step, the knob still in her hand.

Before her lay the first few steps of a dark staircase, worn with the passing of time and many feet. The stairs turned to the left and continued out of view. An image of laughing children, out of breath and jostling each other, flashed through her mind.

She was not afraid. This, she realized, was a bit odd. She was almost always afraid.

And so it was that Libby took her first steps onto that great wooden staircase and followed them around the corner. Suddenly it was as though the walls fell away, and all she could see was the staircase before her and the quiet blackness beyond. A breeze blew mysteriously through her hair, lifting her bangs, and somehow a wondrous excitement was in the breeze.

She climbed and climbed until her calves ached, but she did not mind the pain, for with each step she could feel that other life drifting away. She felt safe in the silence, in the darkness, in the gentle, playful gusts of wind that teased her skirt this way and that.

The stairs eventually stopped at a landing, and before her stood two doors.At first glance they seemed exactly the same; they were built in the same style and made of the same wood, with thick, cedar molding used as trim. The wood floor had grayed in places with age.

Libby glanced down, and she saw a small scroll that had been shoved underneath the door on the right. She bent down and touched it, and thought for an instant that the browned piece of paper sighed with relief. She put her face to the floor, and a sweetness hit her skin with a cool breeze, blowing out from under the door. It smelled of lilacs. She peered into the darkness, but she could see nothing.

She sat back on her heels and slowly tugged at the scroll, moving it gently from side to side until she could pull it out. This took quite a bit of time. The scroll had looked small at first, but she soon realized that it was indeed thin, but also ever so long. Soon she was pulling hand over hand, and she had several feet of it behind her before she reached the end. Its width spread across the entire floor.

Libby began to roll it open and then sat down on top of it, but each time she let go of the top so that she could scoot backwards to open the bottom, the top rolled back and hit her knees with a loud snap. Once it hit her wrist, and she waved her hand and sucked on it to relieve the pain.

She finally realized that she was going to have to read the scroll slowly, looking at only as much as she could pry open at one time. She rose up on her knees and stretched her arms forward so that her hands held down the top edge of the rough paper. She looked through hair that streamed down the sides of her face at the parchment beneath her swaying body.

It was empty. She had not noticed this before. The paper was discolored and yellow and old, but it was most certainly blank.

Then she heard a scratching sound, as of a quill writing on paper. And before her eyes she saw the letters begin to form, letters that were as high as the space between her wrist and her elbow . . .