Photo by Dawn Hastey
Melissa Davis was a rebellious and free-spirited 19-year-old. Restless under her parents’ watchful eye, she enlisted her best friend — who also happened to be her grandmother — to embark on a three-week road trip from her small hometown in Kentucky to Florida. Early one morning, the adventurous duo slipped out of the house while everyone else slept.
What began as an act of youthful rebellion eventually became the foundation for her first novel. Years later, the Air Force veteran returned to the story that had shaped her, enrolling in an online writing class to bring it to life. Over the next two decades, she transformed it into her debut novel, “Reason To Be: Adventures of Improbable Runaways,” self-published last November.
“If I had finished my story 10 years ago, it would not be the story that it is now, so everything fell into place the way it was meant to be,” Davis says. “My grandmother had a great life, and I’m grateful for every moment I had with her. She was my sidekick. When she passed away [at 93], it broke my heart, and I couldn’t let her go. The book is kind of like my goodbye.”
The novel follows the protagonist, Lizzie, and her grandmother as they journey from Kentucky to Florida’s Gulf Coast and then Key West. Readers have told Davis they want to follow her route, and this summer, she hopes to recreate the trip with her own 16-year-old granddaughter — with the teen’s parents’ permission, of course — and schedule signings at bookstores in each featured city.
“It’s a beautiful story about a grandmother and granddaughter finding how their lives mirror one another’s, discovering all the things that they never knew about each other and coming into the next chapter of their lives,” Davis says.
“I want it to be a book that makes people reconnect with their grandparents.”
With a foreword by “The Bachelorette” star and Jupiter native Tyler Cameron, “Reason To Be” is available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble and independent bookstores. Davis recently recorded an audiobook edition, inviting listeners to hear the story in her voice. The 55-year-old Jupiter resident is already working on two more novels — proof that her journey is far from over.