Secrets Of Wayfarers Inn: Author Becky Melby on ‘Family Secrets’

My name is Becky Melby. I live in Wisconsin. And I’m very fortunate to be writing the first book, “Family Secrets” in the Wayfarer Inn Series. My book– our characters have just found the inn. It’s in pretty bad condition. They’re trying to buy it, but someone’s trying to stop them. Someone or something is trying to stop them. 

What I admire most about our main characters– LuAnn, and Tess, and Janice– so a sense of adventure. Their motto since they were in college is to “never be bored, and never be boring, and never act their age.” And they’re really showing that now in their 60s with their new idea of opening an inn. 

Prudence Willard, our historical character, is a Melungeon woman back in the 1850s. She was in her early 20s at the beginning, when she started writing a journal about her involvement with the Underground Railroad. She was born to free parents. 

And when she was a little girl, her parents were captured, even though they were free. And they were sold into slavery. And she went with them, although she went willingly. And when she was about 12 years old, her parents told her to flee, because she had an opportunity. 

And what awaited her was not something good. And so she left her family, and she got away all by herself. And she made it to Ohio. And she married a man– a farmer. And she has dedicated her life to helping other people gain freedom. 

There are some real parallels between what our three present-day characters are doing and what Prudence was doing 160-plus years earlier. Prudence really abides by what God says in Isaiah, that he came to heal the sick, and to bind the broken-hearted, and to set the captives free. 

That’s kind of her motto in life and for our modern-day characters in a different sort of way. They’re opening a bed and breakfast and a cafe, but they really want to use it as a place to minister to people. So there are a lot of parallels. 

In the book that I’m writing in “Family Secrets” our main characters go into an architectural salvage store. And the man says he remembers someone bringing in a brass box. And it was locked, and it clearly had something in it. But it didn’t come with a key. And he doesn’t know where the box is. 

Well, a little while later, we find out that they find a key in the house. And they wonder if it will match that box. And if so, will it answer some of the questions about the mystery– both the historical and the contemporary mystery? 

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