Book Review: The Family Journal by Carolyn Brown

A milestone book, “The Family Journal” is Carolyn Brown’s landmark hundredth novel. And it is so fitting that the subtheme of the book is going home.

This is a slow burn romance between a single mom Lily Anderson and a high school teacher Mack Cooper; both of them in their late thirties or early forties. To them, it’s a second chance at love; but definitely not a second chance romance.

The Family Journal

Still, “The Family Journal” might be classified as a romance but it is really about family with the titular item taking center stage the whole time. The old family journal that Lily Anderson found in her mother’s house was the focal point of this story and the reason why the fractured relationship that Lily had with her two children finally healed.

In this digital age, we seldom sit down and write using pen and paper. Lily’s family journal was initially written by the family matriarch during the Civil War. Handed from daughter to daughter through the generations until it was Lily’s mother’s turn, the journal was a first-person account of the era when those women lived, albeit related on a very personal point of view.

Finding the journal among her mother’s things, Lily shared it with her 14-year old daughter Holly who was in a rebellious age, as part of a school project. And as mother and daughter read what their ancestors wrote, the shared experience bonded Lily and Holly as mother and daughter and as friends.

After reading “The Family Journal” I asked myself what I will leave behind. A hundred years from now, will my great great great grandchildren look at all the digital images I took and all the blog posts I wrote? Or will my digital footprint be a victim of the Digital Dark Age?

Deciding that I cannot trust technology to keep my writings still available 100 years from now, I decided to keep a journal. And believe it or not, a search online revealed that there are many leather-bound journals with acid free paper. There are also fountain pens that are affordable.

Thank you Carolyn Brown for writing “The Family Journal.” It inspired me to start one.

“The Family Journal” is Rated T for Teens.