Amber Palmertree, 10, saw a children's book sitting on top of an office desk.
She picked it up, looked at it, sat down, read it and left the occupant of the desk a note:
"The book on your desk is a good book. I wish I could have a book like that. I wish could borrow the book. Amber."
The volume of interest is Virginia Small Alford's "A Heart's Decree," a tale of a 5-year-old boy, his grandmother and his frog, Bug Man.
But can a frog really belong to a boy? How much do grandchildren and grandparents have to teach one another?
These are among the questions that in one way or another are answered in "A Heart's Decree."
It opens with, "This is a true story. They are the best kind. It is about a little boy named Daniel who came all alone a long way in a Trailways bus to visit his Granny. …"
Granny, of course, is Alford, and the setting is her former home on River Road in Greenwood, where she lived for 35 years and brought up three sons and a daughter.
Alford, 82, is a registered dietitian who had a private counseling service and then worked 16 years for Kidney Care. She wrote health and nutrition columns for the Commonwealth, and she had a regular health segment on morning television.
Now 82, Alford lives in Kosciusko. She moved there in 1997 to be near her son, Tim, a physician in family practice, and his family.
"Kosciusko is a good town. I miss Greenwood - I always will - but I have been really happy here," Alford says.
And sometimes she returns to Greenwood. The other day, she and a granddaughter visited to make arrangements, which were successful, for selling "A Heart's Decree" at Turnrow Book Co., Mississippi Gift Co. and Cottonlandia Museum.
Canton artist Perry Thickens Ritchie illustrated the book with colorful multimedia images: Bug man beside a drainpipe and begonias, Daniel reading about toads and frogs, boys playing baseball, the Trailways bus, Alford's former home on River Road - and an attic corner filled with the sorts of things mothers and grandmothers treasure but children and grandchildren leave behind.
The book is self-published by Yellow Dog Press. "That's me," Alford said, explaining that the name came to her because she is a Democrat.
She said she was a campaign organizer in Leflore County for former Gov. William Winter and one of her daughters-in-law worked for him.
Winter endorsed the book. "Virginia Alford … has captured the essence of the love that for one serene summer vacation existed between a little boy and a little frog. Its ending carries a profound message not just for children but for all of us."
Alford wrote "A Heart's Desire" five years after Daniel's visit.
Helen Redding, her daughter, prodded Alford into publishing the story. Redding lives in Jackson, Tenn.
Daniel, now 30, lives there, too. He has a son, Jordan, 6.
Writing, for Alford, usually is a private impulse. "I have written stories and poetry and things like that all of my life," she said.
"Sometimes, I never shared them with anybody. Sometimes, it was just getting the story on paper for myself. But, they are all here, stacked around."
"Writing helps her sort through what she thinks and feels. "The very first thing I ever wrote, it was about a teacher who was very kind to me, and that was something that filled my heart so that I had to write about it.
"Some things just need to be shared, and you don't necessarily have somebody right there to listen, but you can put them on paper."
Sometimes when she reads a piece again, she thinks it is silly.
Other times, Alford said, "You are glad you put it down while you were feeling so intensely."
Much of this charts personal growth. That is something that is always going on, she said. "It doesn't stop. You have to keep changing because circumstances keep changing on you."
These days, Alford copes with multiple myeloma, an incurable but treatable cancer involving bone marrow. She might not feel well one day, but the next will be fine. She has known she has the disease for 20 years.
Each day has its surprises - unplanned events such as hearing about the young girl Amber's discovery of "A Heart's Decree."
Amber's mother, Brenda Palmertree, said she, too, noticed the book, read it and liked it. She wanted to know if the author had written other children's books.
"That's the only children's book I have ever written," Alford said. But, "I have a good many things like that I have given to my granddaughter. She might try to do something with them someday."
