Dear Fellow Traveler,
I’m glad you’re here.
If you’ve found your way to this page, you may be wondering what kind of person writes stories about secret guardians, ancient wisdom, and the long journey home.
I’ll try to shed some light on that by telling you a story.
You see, long before emails, texting, and social media, I used to write letters.
The old-fashioned handwritten kind, pen to paper, with scratched-out edits and little arrows that inserted words.
But more than that, those letters were full of my unfiltered longings, hopes, and dreams.
I’d pour my soul into them.
Streams of consciousness, they were. I never knew what the next line would bring.
I only knew that I wanted what I was trying to capture with words to touch the friend I was writing to. To warm a heart a few degrees, perhaps on a cold Michigan winter day.
Many years later, when Jian, the young heroine of The Secret Guardians, first walked into my imagination, I realized, albeit slowly, that at the core of her lived some of those same longings that I’d penned in those letters years before.
So who was that young man writing all those letters?
Well, I grew up in Detroit as the oldest of nine children in a Catholic family. Over the years I’ve served in the Army during the Vietnam War, strayed from the straight and narrow, cleaned up my act, worked as a newspaper reporter and editor, ran a business, raised a family, and eventually found a home here in Bozeman, Montana.
Through it all, I’ve come to believe that we are part of a story far more awesome than just the one we can see.
And from that came The Secret Guardians.
They’re adventure stories, yes.
But I hope they’re something more than that.
I hope they invite you to wonder. To ask questions. Like Jian does. To pause now and then and let a quiet moment linger. Like she does.
Perhaps you’ll finish the books with more questions than answers.
That would be fine with me.
Because I have questions too.
I’m still learning every day. And still walking that long road home.
I’m grateful you’ve chosen to walk a while with Jian and me.
Warmly,
Patrick Rogers