Readers who immerse themselves in the Guest Book trilogy – The Man in Cabin Number Five, The Girls in Cabin Number Three and The Starlet in Cabin Number Seven – by Chrysteen Braun will recognize many of the landmarks mentioned. Lake Arrowhead and its surrounding area almost become another character in the books.
Braun will be at Timberline in the Glen on Friday, Nov. 29 from 1 to 5 p.m. and on Saturday, Nov. 30 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. where she will be signing her books.
The Guest Book trilogy has been expanded to include a beginning and a conclusion.
At the signing event she will be featuring her latest book, Dear Noah, the fifth book in the series which brings the story to a conclusion. All of her books, including the fourth one, The Maidservant in Cabin Number One (the beginning) will be available at Timberline in the Glen.
The books, Braun said, “are set in Lake Arrowhead and the mountains, where our first cabins in Skyforest and then Cedar Ridge were the inspiration for my books. Every time we came up, I felt a connection that made me want to write books I wanted to read. If I wasn’t at our store, At the Cabin, at the intersection of Highway 18 and Kuffel Canyon Road, I was writing.”
The series – which now includes five books but began as a trilogy – begins when Annie Parker, who has just had her 80th birthday, decides to write about a time in her life when she was starting over. She moves to the mountains and restores a series of cabins built in the 1920s and soon discovers they each have a story to tell.
In the first three books, Annie meets the son and daughters of the guests who stayed in the cabins in the ‘20s and ‘30s. “They know what most of us know about our parents,” Braun said. “Just the surface but never the secrets they carried and what drove them to do the things they did.
“What is different about my books is, in the end, the people who have stayed in the cabins tell their own stories. I had never read anything like that before.”
Braun adds that, as she was finishing the trilogy, she wanted to finish telling Annie’s story so she began working on Dear Noah. And because she was also thinking about the cabins before Annie bought and restored them, she then began The Maidservant in Cabin Number One, the story of the woman who came up to the mountains to start a new life and owned the cabins in the ‘20s. “If you’ve read the first books,” Braun said, “you’ll get to read Sam’s story, too.
“I consider my books women’s fiction, combining love, friendships and new beginnings with a touch of mystery and intrigue.”
Braun invites anyone who has already purchased any of these books to bring them to Timberline in the Glen on Nov. 29 or 30 and she will sign them.
“I love meeting my readers!” she said.
Chrysteen Braun is a California native, having been born and raised in Long Beach. She and her husband, Larry, enjoyed their second home in the mountains, which served as the inspiration for her books. She has published articles about interior design and remodeling for trade publications and her local newspaper. She now lives in Coto de Caza with her husband and two Siamese cats.
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