Book 1- "Can you Hear Me?" Reason for writing.

'Can You Hear Me? ' has a subtitle, "Miss Sarah's civil War Journal"

Years ago I as most people do got that I want to know where I came from itch. My fathers name was Kenmar, as far as I knew, but research and information proved he was really a Kenmare.

Oh, the marvelous tales I heard from different relatives. Some believed we came from Ireland. That was true, partially. In Truth we came from England. A few, including my family had went to Ireland.

I was told we had a town and a castle named after us, Kenmare Ireland. This proved completely untrue. There was the Duke of Kenmare but alas his real name was not Kenmare.

I made a trip, a unforgettable trip, to Ireland and located in the town of Kilkeel, the last of our family and walked the ground of the old Kenmare farm. It was there I would discover the story of England.

More determined, I started tracing the Kenmares as they arrived in America, finding my g-great grandfather had served in the American Revolution. They had worked at farming and timber cutters. Working on crews that supplied the lumber for many town from Wilmington,North Carolina, York, SC and towns in surrounding areas.

John Albert Kenmare, was the traveler. So when he and brother James at the ages of sixteen and seventeen, heard the adventitious tales of the west, they decided to travel west. It was told after they crossed a raging river, they somehow got separated. John told of searching for weeks. Afterward John went southward as James made his way on into Arkansas.

John married three times, his third wife , my great grand mother had him eleven children. She proved to be a hearty soul and she out lived him by many years. One of these children had inherited a small Journal that she had kept of her growing up amid the civil war. In her child like hand writing. I read of her fears, and the terror the children had faced. I knew I had to record as much of it as I could, so I started the Saga of Sarah. I researched each leg of her journey as she too had traveled from the Carolina's. Did she and John Know each other as children? I do not know. Her father had worked in some of the same crews as John's father. It is possible.

I began to write, seeing my grand mother in every page. A tiny wisp of a girl, only eight years old, forced to grow up to fast in a war her family did not support. So armed with the journal and years of research, I began to write a true fictional novel. All the facts and dates are true. I took liberties with the story. Thus I had a true fiction Book.

Tomorrow:

My first Baby, "Can You Hear Me," started out to be two books, but the publisher suggested I combine both books and make a longer book.