What would you do if you went to bed tonight and had a dream that changed your life, and your family's history, forever? On January 3, 1999, Suzanne Peyton awoke from a vivid dream that set her on a seventeen-year journey to uncover the truth about a woman her family believed had abandoned her children nearly a century earlier. Exactly forty years before that dream, on January 3, 1958, Suzanne's great-grandmother, Virginia Avery, took her own life after being wrongly committed to a mental institution and silenced by decades of lies. As Suzanne begins to question the stories passed down through generations, her search leads her to New Orleans and into the heart of her family's hidden past. Along the way, she finds herself mysteriously writing diary entries in language and cadence from another era: words that do not feel like her own. Are these writings clues guiding her toward the truth, or memories from a past life when she lived as Virginia in the Garden District of New Orleans? Virginia's Diary is a deeply personal memoir that blends family history, spiritual awakening, and the struggle to reconcile faith with experiences that defy easy explanation. With honesty and vulnerability, Suzanne Peyton explores grief, truth, forgiveness, and the enduring power of love across generations.
