Courtesy Photo Kylie Beevers, 15, poses with her first book, “Rise of the Livingwood.” She will be signing copies Friday at Olivet Book and Gift in Alpena.

ALPENA — Young author Kylie Beevers, 15, will be at Olivet Book and Gift in downtown Alpena from 1 to 3 p.m. on Friday signing copies of her first youth fiction, “Rise of the Livingwood.”

“It’s a middle-grade Christian fiction fantasy,” said Beevers, of Lachine. “It’s revolving around the events of my main character, Bramble, who is just your ordinary fox.”

She explained that the book is geared for ages 10 and up.

Bramble faces many adventures and challenges throughout the story.

“It’s an animal protagonist book,” Beevers said. “Living in a land of peace and solitude with his family, before something calls him to a bigger calling. That calling has him forced to go up front and battle these wolves that are coming.”

She explained how she came up with the story.

“Growing up, I loved animal protagonist books,” Beevers said. “You have ‘The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe,’ you have Thornton Burgess, you have all these good, deep, meaningful allegories that are, kind of, sunken beneath animal protagonist characters, and even though they’re not human, you have the feeling that they’re human.”

She wanted to write something relevant to appeal to youth.

“I wanted to recreate something for the middle-grade genre today that would impact people in the same way it impacted me when I was younger,” she said.

Burgess and C.S. Lewis are two children’s authors whom Beevers admires.

“S.C. Smith is another one,” she added. “Andrew Peterson, the author of ‘The Wingfeather Saga.’ All of those are great authors.”

Beevers published this book when she was just 13.

“We were in the moving process,” she said. “We used to live downstate, and we were heavily bombarded with boredom, so I just went ahead and decided, ‘You know what? I’m going to write a book!’ I’ve always been a little bit of a writer. I grew up loving language arts, and it just clicked. I picked up the pen and paper and I was like, ‘I’m just going for it.'”

She talked about what she likes best about writing, which is “giving children the ability to read clean and morally sound content. That means a lot to me right now.”

“This is a great story for the whole family to read, full of suspense and action,” said Olivet owner Mary Rajasekhar. “I truly enjoyed this book!”

“This is the the first installment for the Livingwood Chronicles,” Beevers noted. “It’s going to be a trilogy.”

Book Two is due to be released this fall.

Beevers encourages other writers to “keep pressing on, because you never know how much your story’s going to impact one person that picks it up.”