About Seeing the Story

The Inspiration

The more novels Roseanna wrote, the more emails she began getting. And some of them weren’t so much about the books themselves as about how they reminded the reader of something else…often of someone else. A father or grandmother or aunt or neighbor who lived a story very similar to her hero or heroine’s.

As these stories began filling Roseanna’s inbox, she found the whole concept of story collection working its way into one of her books, Dreams of Savannah. The heroine, Cordelia, is a storyteller and writer. But as she travels through her own story, she comes to realize that life is about more than stumbling into a romance or an adventure. It’s about living the story you want to tell. It’s about seeing the stories of the people around you and letting that change how you view them.

As the daughter of a slave-holding family, Cordelia had been raised to see her slaves as more furniture than people. But as her eyes are opened to the trials of one particular servant, she comes to realize that everyone around her has a story. They have histories. They have families. They have cried and laughed and fought and prayed.

They are people.

Only when we really know someone’s story are we capable of understanding how they’re like us, where they’re different, and why. Only when we know their story can we truly love them.

As Cordelia discovered this truth, it nestled deep in Roseanna’s heart too. In the back of the book she left an open invitation to all her readers: Tell me your stories.

But one invitation to a handful of readers who actually read her author’s note wasn’t quite enough. And so, she decided to begin this project.

Seeing the Story is a gathering place. A place for story-tellers and story-seekers and story-collectors to come together. A place to post your stories and share them with your family, your neighbors, and the world. A place the learn the stories of others too.