Keepsake from the Prairie: The Little Book That Found Me
A Keepsake from the Prairie: The Little Book That Found Me and I Produced It Into A Song
Many years ago, as a young boy roaming the prairies with my mother, I learned to love the stories hidden in forgotten places. She’d take me antique hunting across the windswept landscapes of Wyoming and later South Dakota—places where time seemed to stand still amid the dust and tall grass. I’d wander through old homesteads, imagining the lives of the families who once called them home: the sacrifices, the joys, the quiet struggles etched into every rusty nail and weathered board.
On one particular day, I found myself walking through a larger-than-most abandoned house on an old farmstead. The place felt suspended in time. Dust coated every surface, windows were long broken out, and dry leaves had blown in to carpet the floors. Birds had claimed the rafters as their own, turning empty rooms into a quiet sanctuary. Something about the house drew me deeper inside. I climbed the stairs and noticed an attic access panel. Curious whether the family had left anything behind in their haste to move on, I pulled it open.
Inside the attic lay scattered magazines and, among them, one small paperback book. It looked remarkably well-preserved. I slipped it into my back pocket as my keepsake from that day—nothing fancy, just a tangible piece of the story I was imagining. Back at my truck, I pulled it out and examined it more closely.
The title on the cover read Men of the Bible, written by D.L. Moody. His signature appeared inside. What stopped me cold was the copyright date: exactly one hundred years earlier, to the day, from the moment I stood there on that lonely prairie farm. A chill ran through me. I flipped through the pages and discovered it contained ten short stories about men from Scripture. My hand paused on one in particular: “The Penitent Thief.” I had never heard of it.
I started reading right there in the truck. Before I reached the end, tears were streaming down my face. The story of that dying thief on the cross beside Jesus—his simple, desperate plea and the Savior’s immediate promise of paradise—struck something deep in my heart. It was grace in its rawest form: hope for the hopeless, forgiveness at the final moment.
I still have that little book today. Years later, the story moved me so profoundly that I wrote and recorded a song called The Thief, retelling the same powerful account in music.
Out of curiosity, I reached out to the D.L. Moody Bible Institute and spoke with their archivist. He told me they had just one copy in their collection. As far as he knew, the one in my hands was likely the only other surviving copy. That small paperback, pulled from an attic in an abandoned prairie home, had found its way to me exactly a century after it was published—a quiet reminder that some stories refuse to stay buried.
These days when I hold that book, I’m reminded not only of the unknown family who left it behind, but of the enduring power of a simple message of redemption. Some keepsakes aren’t just relics of the past—they become part of your own story.