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Nicholas Sparks lives in North Carolina.

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ing author of Message in a Bottle and The Notebook returns with a deeply moving tale of first love and its transformational powers.

"When I was seventeen, my life changed forever"... So begins Nicholas Sparks' touching tale of Landon Carter, a teenage boy living in the small town of Beaufort, North Carolina in the late 1950s. Landon is a typical teenager who just wants to have a fun senior year before heading off to college. The last thing he anticipated is Jamie Sullivan, the sweet, pious daughter of the town's Baptist minister. But on the evening of Beaufort's annual Christmas pageant, Landon will undergo a change of heart that will forever alter the course of his life. In the months that follow, Landon discovers truths that it takes most people a lifetime to learn- truths about the nature of beauty, the joy of giving, the pain of loss, and, most of all, the transformational power of love.

Nicholas Sparks' most recent novel, Message

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ing author of Message in a Bottle and The Notebook returns with a deeply moving tale of first love and its transformational powers.

"When I was seventeen, my life changed forever"... So begins Nicholas Sparks' touching tale of Landon Carter, a teenage boy living in the small town of Beaufort, North Carolina in the late 1950s. Landon is a typical teenager who just wants to have a fun senior year before heading off to college. The last thing he anticipated is Jamie Sullivan, the sweet, pious daughter of the town's Baptist minister. But on the evening of Beaufort's annual Christmas pageant, Landon will undergo a change of heart that will forever alter the course of his life. In the months that follow, Landon discovers truths that it takes most people a lifetime to learn- truths about the nature of beauty, the joy of giving, the pain of loss, and, most of all, the transformational power of love.

Nicholas Sparks' most recent novel, Message

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A Walk to Remember

Random House Large Print Publishing

Chapter One

In 1958, Beaufort, North Carolina, which is located on the coast near Morehead City,was a place like many other small southern towns. It was the kind of place where thehumidity rose so high in the summer that walking out to get the mail made a personfeel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked around barefoot from April throughOctober beneath oak trees draped in Spanish moss. People waved from their carswhenever they saw someone on the street whether they knew him or not, and the airsmelled of pine, salt, and sea, a scent unique to the Carolinas. For many of thepeople there, fishing in the Pamlico Sound or crabbing in the Neuse River was a wayof life, and boats were moored wherever you saw the Intracoastal Waterway. Only threechannels came in on the television, though television was never important to those ofus who grew up there. Instead our lives were centered around the churches, of whichthere were eighteen within the town limits alone. They went by names like theFellowship Hall Christian Church, the Church of the Forgiven People, the Church ofSunday Atonement, and then, of course, there were the Baptist churches. When I wasgrowing up, it was far and away the most popular denomination around, and there wereBaptist churches on practically every corner of town, though each considered itselfsuperior to the others. There were Baptist churches of every type?Freewill Baptists,Southern Baptists, Congregational Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Independent Baptists. . . well, you get the picture.

Back then, the big event of the year was sponsored by the Baptist churchdowntown?Southern, if you really want to know?in conjunction with the local highschool. Every year they put on their Christmas pageant at the Beaufort Playhouse,which was actually a play that had been written by Hegbert Sullivan, a minister who'dbeen with the church since Moses parted the Red Sea. Okay, maybe he wasn't that old,but he was old enough that you could almost see through the guy's skin. It was sortof clammy all the time, and translucent?kids would swear they actually saw the bloodflowing through his veins?and his hair was as white as those bunnies you see in petstores around Easter.

Anyway, he wrote this play called The Christmas Angel, because he didn't wantto keep on performing that old Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. Inhis mind Scrooge was a heathen, who came to his redemption only because he sawghosts, not angels?and who was to say whether they'd been sent by God, anyway? Andwho was to say he wouldn't revert to his sinful ways if they hadn't been sentdirectly from heaven? The play didn't exactly tell you in the end?it sort of playsinto faith and all?but Hegbert didn't trust ghosts if they weren't actually sent byGod, which wasn't explained in plain language, and this was his big problem with it.A few years back he'd changed the end of the play?sort of followed it up with his ownversion, complete with old man Scrooge becoming a preacher and all, heading off toJerusalem to find the place where Jesus once taught the scribes. It didn't fly toowell?not even to the congregation, who sat in the audience staring wide-eyed at thespectacle?and the newspaper said things like "Though it was certainly interesting, itwasn't exactly the play we've all come to know and love. . . ."

So Hegbert decided to try his hand at writing his own play. He'd written his ownsermons his whole life, and some of them, we had to admit, were actually interesting,especially when he talked about the "wrath of God coming down on the fornicators" andall that good stuff. That really got his blood boiling, I'll tell you, when he talkedabout the fornicators. That was his real hot spot. When we were younger, my friendsand I would hide behind the trees and shout, "Hegbert is a fornicator!" when we sawhim walking down the street, and we'd giggle like idiots, like we were the wittiestcreatures ever to inhabit the planet.

Old Hegbert, he'd stop dead in his tracks and his ears would perk up?I swear to God,they actually moved?and he'd turn this bright shade of red, like he'd just drunkgasoline, and the big green veins in his neck would start sticking out all over, likethose maps of the Amazon River that you see in National Geographic. He'd peer fromside to side, his eyes narrowing into slits as he searched for us, and then, just assuddenly, he'd start to go pale again, back to that fishy skin, right before oureyes. Boy, it was something to watch, that's for sure.

So we'd be hiding behind a tree and Hegbert (what kind of parents name their kidHegbert, anyway?) would stand there waiting for us to give ourselves up, as if hethought we'd be that stupid. We'd put our hands over our mouths to keep from laughingout loud, but somehow he'd always zero in on us. He'd be turning from side to side,and then he'd stop, those beady eyes coming right at us, right through the tree. "Iknow who you are, Landon Carter," he'd say, "and the Lord knows, too." He'd let thatsink in for a minute or so, and then he'd finally head off again, and during thesermon that weekend he'd stare right at us and say something like "God is merciful tochildren, but the children must be worthy as well." And we'd sort of lower ourselvesin the seats, not from embarrassment, but to hide a new round of giggles. Hegbertdidn't understand us at all, which was really sort of strange, being that he had akid and all. But then again, she was a girl. More on that, though, later.

Anyway, like I said, Hegbert wrote The Christmas Angel one year and decided to put onthat play instead. The play itself wasn't bad, actually, which surprised everyone thefirst year it was performed. It's basically the story of a man who had lost his wifea few years back. This guy, Tom Thornton, used to be real religious, but he had acrisis of faith after his wife died during childbirth. He's raising this little girlall on his own, but he hasn't been the greatest father, and what the little girlreally wants for Christmas is a special music box with an angel engraved on top, apicture of which she'd cut out from an old catalog. The guy searches long and hard tofind the gift, but he can't find it anywhere. So it's Christmas Eve and he's stillsearching, and while he's out looking through the stores, he comes across a strangewoman he's never seen before, and she promises to help him find the gift for hisdaughter. First, though, they help this homeless person (back then they were calledbums, by the way), then they stop at an orphanage to see some kids, then visit alonely old woman who just wanted some company on Christmas Eve. At this point themysterious woman asks Tom Thornton what he wants for Christmas, and he says that hewants his wife back. She brings him to the city fountain and tells him to look in thewater and he'll find what he's looking for. When he looks in the water, he sees theface of his little girl, and he breaks down and cries right there. While he'ssobbing, the mysterious lady runs off, and Tom Thornton searches but can't find heranywhere. Eventually he heads home, the lessons from the evening playing in his mind.He walks into his little girl's room, and her sleeping figure makes him realize thatshe's all he has left of his wife, and he starts to cry again because he knows hehasn't been a good enough father to her. The next morning, magically, the music boxis underneath the tree, and the angel that's engraved on it looks exactly like thewoman he'd seen the night before.

So it wasn't that bad, really. If truth be...