Sometimes the place no one wants to go is exactly where you need to be…
Whispering Hill is a stone mountain in North Carolina where the Cherokee, both ancient and modern, dare not tread. The disembodied voices that permeate both its rugged top and hollow insides keep most people away, while others seem to be drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

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In the fall of 1839 Jedidiah Cooke is running, running from the trail of pain and destruction he’s left behind, but mostly running from himself. The uniform he’s wearing represents self-sacrifice but in Jedidiah’s world there is no room for anything beyond self itself. That doesn’t change when he finds himself assigned to forcing Cherokees from their homes to start marching them down the long and torturous road that will later become known as the trail of tears. At least not until he finds himself paired up with another man even more despicable and unprincipled than himself and facing a challenge unlike any he’s ever faced before—to do the right thing!
Almost two centuries later and half a continent away another young man, homeless and hopeless, finds himself standing at the threshold of eternity. Elijah Jackson is tired. Tired of the daily struggle that each day brings to a man enslaved to drugs and alcohol, and tired of being haunted by a past as dark as his present. Looking out over the edge of a bridge railing at the thousand foot drop to the river below him, Elijah struggles to find the courage to put an end to the pain called life. But before he can take that final, fatal step, a hand on his shoulder stops him and a stranger hands him an envelope with his name written on it. Inside is an invitation to a mysterious place called Lakehurst Manor, with the promise he’ll find everything he needs when he gets there. While Elijah’s not sure what that could possibly be, the final line printed at the bottom of the invitation rings true—what have you got to lose? These two are not the first or the last lives that God has called to be reforged on the anvil of Whispering Hill, but they, like so many others before and after, will be forever changed, and those changes will reach well beyond the men themselves.
Status
On the recommendation of a publishing agent I highly respect, I’m going to pursue self-publishing for Invitation to Lakehurst. It’s just too long of a novel for a traditional publisher to take on from an unknown writer. I am currently researching how to best proceed, but I’m already finding out that the process is largely the same as working with a traditional publishing house.
Prayer and Book Launch Support
I fervently seek all of your prayers as I work toward getting Lakehurst formatted and accepted by Amazon and other self-publishing agencies. Also, just as with traditional publishing, building book launch teams is a critical part of helping a novel to be well received.
ARC Readers or Advanced Reader Copy readers are the people who get to read the book after it’s made it through all the editing hurdles and it’s finally ready to be published but hasn’t yet been made available to the general public. We still need ARC readers for Lakehurst, if you think you might be interested in being one and would like to know more about what that entails, please check out the ARC Reader page.
Thank you and have a blessed day!
Mike