When people begin reading about Corrie’s adventures, they race through every installment of the Journals of Corrie Belle Hollister one after the other. The years pass and Corrie grows as a young woman and as a Christian. Her eyes open to life and relationships, to God and herself, and to the world and her own place in it.

As her perceptions deepen, a maturing lady replaces the bewildered teen. Her skill as a writer leads to a career as a journalist, which brings notoriety along with it, and eventually takes Corrie east to cover the Civil War, and more dangers and adventures. All the while Corrie’s walk with God deepens.

For most who meet her, Corrie becomes not just a storyteller, but a friend.

The following excerpt from the opening of My Father’s World, the first book in the series, will give you an idea of the flavor and style of Corrie’s writing. (Of course, Corrie’s writing is really mine, but you know what I mean.)

Ma always told me I should keep a diary. “Corrie,” she’d say, “when a young woman’s not of the marryin’ sort, she needs to think of somethin’ besides a man to get her through life.” I think she was making a roundabout comment about my looks, though she never came right out and said I wasn’t comely enough to snag a husband. I guess she figured a diary would be a good idea, too, since I had my nose in a book all the time, and I ought to get some practical use from all that reading. “It sure ain’t gonna get you no feller though,” she’d say, “any more’n that nose full of freckles!” “What’s keepin’ a diary got to do with marryin’?”

I asked her. “No man wants a wife that’s smarter’n him—” She paused, then added with a sly wink, “Leastways, not so’s it’s obvious!” Then she took my chin in her rough, work-worn hand, and smiled down on me with that loving look that was almost as good as a hug, and said—as if to make up for saying I wasn’t a marrying kind of girl—“I reckon you’ll do okay though, Corrie.” I was just a kid then, probably not more than ten, though I can’t exactly remember. I didn’t know what all the fuss was about. The last thing I wanted back then was to marry some ornery, dirty-faced boy. So what she said didn’t bother me. I was perfectly content with my books. “You could be a teacher, Corrie,” Ma said more than once. Then she’d go on to speculate, “Teachin’s a right respectable way for a spinster to get by in this world.”

She talked a lot about women getting on in the world alone, probably on account of Pa’s leaving like he did. It was hard on Ma, being left with the farm to tend, and four kids and another on the way. I suspect more than once she wished she’d been a spinster herself! Back then, when I remember her first talking to me about what I ought to do, I didn’t have the faintest notion what a spinster was, and I was hardly of a mind to start preparing for my future. But whatever spinster meant, I did know what a teacher was, because I liked our Miss Boyd. As for teaching myself, I’d have to wait and see. “If you’re going to know book learnin’ and all that, Corrie,” Ma said, “you gotta do more’n just read. You gotta learn how to write good, too. And I figure there ain’t much better a way than to keep a diary.” Well, maybe Ma was right.

Though I never did much about her advice after that. Until I got to be fifteen, that is. By then I knew what a spinster was, and I knew about plain-looking girls. And I knew why the two always went together. So I began to see what it might be like to be alone in the world, and to figure maybe Ma’s idea about me teachin’ was a good one, though I was still a mite young to be going to a teacher’s school or college to learn how. Besides, Miracle Springs doesn’t even have a school for kids, much less a college. Once Ma was gone, I knew I had to get thinkin’ mighty fast about something. She was right about that. The kids were looking to me for tending, right out there in the middle of nowhere. And it sure wasn’t likely to be any different once we got to where we were going. Even if we found Uncle Nick, they were still going to be looking to me to be a kind of ma to them—and a teacher, too. Even if it was only little Tad, and Becky, Emily, and Zack, I was bound to be teaching them a thing or two since Ma couldn’t. So I figured it was time I started that diary. Of course I didn’t know how. I knew how to write, and that was about it. So I just started to put down what happened, though it didn’t seem there was much exciting in it. I sure did miss Ma. She’d have told me what a diary was supposed to be like.

I wish I’d started back when she first told me to do it. Or even last spring when we left our little patch of ground in upstate New York to come out West. Then I would have written about the wagon crossing after leaving St. Louis, about the plains of Kansas, the grand herds of buffalo, the scare with the Sioux near Ft. Laramie, the day Emily and I almost got left behind picking berries, and the snow that was still on the mountains in Utah in July. Most of all, I wish Ma could have been there to show me how to do it right. But even if I had started back then, I probably wouldn’t have written about the desert and what happened to Ma. I never want to remember that, though I’ll never forget it. So by the time I got started writing things down, we were in California, and the long trip was mostly behind us, just like Ma wanted. But she’d never get to see it.

GRAYFOX —Book 9 of The Journals of Corrie Belle Hollister

The seventh book in the Corrie Belle Hollister series, Grayfox, is also a favorite. It is written in the voice of Corrie’s brother Zack, which makes it a story boys love. Zack is struggling as a boy who has grown up in Corrie’s shadow. After an explosive argument with his father, he leaves home to join the Pony Express. Thrown from his horse in the middle of Nevada’s desert and left unconscious, Zack’s adventures with a mysterious mountain man and a tribe of Indians are just beginning. Along the way, Zack has to grow up fast, and decide the kind of man he wants to be.

From the opening of Grayfox:

“You ain’t got no right to call yourself my father no more!”

The bitter words rang over and over through my brain. I lashed my horse harder and harder, as if riding faster would take them away. But they kept coming back, echoing through my ears…no right…no right to call yourself my father!

They’d been out of my mouth before I had known it. It was all I could do to force the tears to stay inside my eyes! A horrible knot was wrenching my stomach apart. How could I have said such an awful thing? But they kept ringing through my head, like an iron gong crashing inside my skull from ear to ear. Above the pounding of hooves on the dirt, above the sounds of the wind on my face and the leather whip on the horse’s rump, above it all the sound of my own voice kept yelling out the cruel words straight at my own father.

On I rode. I hadn’t looked back yet, though my heart was aching and sick over what I’d done.

But kids aren’t usually able to calm themselves down, and then go back and apologize for what they’ve done. And though I may have been twenty-one at the time, I was still a kid as sure as my name was Zachary Hollister. And besides being a kid, I was full of all kinds of angry feelings toward my pa, though half my reasons for them didn’t make much sense. It was a mighty mixed up way to feel.

That’s how I felt—angry, guilty, mixed up. But I couldn’t go back. I was too proud, too hurt, too mad all rolled into one. I reckon that’s a mite common among young boys who figure they’re old enough to be considered men but don’t figure enough folks know it yet. They’re too proud to admit it when they go off and do something foolish that shows how much growing up they’ve still got to do. And then their pride—which is a little-boy thing, not a grown-up manly thing—gets them all the deeper into the hole they dug themselves into. That’s sure what happened to me! Proud and angry and selfish, and not so grown-up as I wanted to be…but too proud to admit any of it!

I’d told my father I was leaving home to join the Pony Express. I hadn’t just told him, I’d yelled it at him! And I’d told him he had no right to call himself my father anymore. Though I was aching and crying inside, and feeling so alone in the middle of my hurt, another part of me had meant the words.

I’m ashamed to say it now, but it’s true.

So I kept right on riding. I didn’t turn back. And I forced back the tears. That was another thing that showed that I was still a boy. I still thought that it wasn’t a manly thing to cry. And I kept riding from home as fast as my horse would carry me.