Hannah’s voice came to me in the middle of an ordinary quick write with a student. Right in the middle of recording the mundane details of the day—the time, where I was, and which student I was writing with—a voice spoke to me and said, “My name is Hannah Price.”

She went on to tell me she was twelve years old and lived down a dirt road that became impassable whenever it rained. She described her mother, who didn’t like sending Hannah and her siblings to school very much, preferring to keep them at home. She hinted that her mother often became blue and had a tendency to drink too much, especially when Hannah’s daddy was away during the week for work.

That voice has haunted me ever since.

From the beginning, I knew this girl had a story to tell. At first, she lived in rural Arkansas. Over time, she found her true home in North Texas, not far from where I grew up. Hannah herself has changed as well. She has grown from a frightened twelve-year-old who ushered her younger siblings outside while the sheriff told her mother about her father’s “other life,” sending Nadine into a devastating tailspin and drinking binge, into a seventeen-year-old young woman who responds to those same events with the eye of an investigator. Rather than simply surviving what happens to her family, she chooses to search for the truth herself.

I need to tell this story because I know from living life that truth is complicated. It has many shades and rarely fits into the neat categories we would prefer. Faith, too, is often more complicated than we admit. I have come to believe that two people can practice the same religion and yet experience it in remarkably different ways—one finding freedom, another fear. That mystery is part of this story as well.

I also need to set this book in my home territory of North Texas because I love that part of the country and the people who live there. I want readers to see that, regardless of the stereotypes attached to any place, people are remarkably alike. Everywhere you go, they carry deep passions, old hurts, impossible dreams, and countless reasons they tell themselves they cannot become the full and whole people they were meant to be.

I also need to write this book so I can come to know these characters completely. I want to understand where they have been, where they are going, and why they make the choices they do. This is my first true foray into pure fiction, and I want to experience the sheer joy of creating an entire world from my imagination. I also want to prove to myself that I am capable of writing a novel of this depth, complexity, and organization.

As I enter this final stage of my life, I want my mind occupied with something life-giving. I want to take risks with both my writing and my life. I want to explore subjects that matter deeply to me: family dynamics, the power of love, the strength of forgiveness, and the remarkable capacity people have to change—including me. Throughout my years as a counselor, a teacher, and simply as a human being, I have witnessed transformations I never thought possible. I have changed, too, with age, experience, loss, and grace.

Mostly, I want to keep my mind engaged in meaningful work. I want my children and grandchildren to attend another reading, then another, and another. I want them to know that creativity does not have an expiration date. Writing is not simply something I do; it is the life I have chosen and the profession I love, through and through.

Hannah came looking for me on an ordinary day when I wasn’t expecting her. Ever since then, I have felt a responsibility—not simply to invent her story, but to discover it. I don’t know exactly where this novel will lead me, but I trust Hannah enough to follow. My hope is that somewhere along the way, readers will see a little of themselves in her family, her courage, her questions, and her search for the truth. If that happens, then the years spent writing A House Divided will have been well worth it.