The Last Entry

When her father mysteriously disappears, twelve-year-old Bethany Henderson pours her feelings into her journal...including a heartfelt imagining of his return. One year later, Mr. Henderson returns-a homecoming identical to Bethany's diary entry.

Bethany's journal, it seems, has the ability to alter reality. On the night her father returns she learns that his disappearance has something to do with his past, but her parents won't tell her why.

Now at twenty-three, her obsession with her journal and her parents' secret lead her to leave the suburbs and beaches of San Diego by train to a small town in Illinois where something terrible must have happened twenty years ago. On the train she must relive her life through her journal entries hoping to uncover the mysteries.

But when she arrives in Willow Grove, Bethany has no idea that her father's past will collide with her present. Terrified, she's held captive in the basement of an old house, but this time she doesn't have her journal to save her.

A vivid young adult fantasy containing touches of romance and a deeply buried family mystery, "The Last Entry "is reminiscent of Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" and Janet Fitch's "White Oleander."