Based on a global initiative, the One Book One Community (OBOC) event took the entire Valley on a shared journey of reading, reflection and thought.

Supported by Candelo Books owner Myoung Jae Yi, hundreds of copies were sold and shared across the region to arrive at this evening.

The culmination of months of community events and hundreds of readers participating across the Valley saw multi-award winning author Favel Parrett visit the Sapphire Coast and share her journey of writing her third novel There Was Still Love.

The book tells a story of separation and loss, refuge and recovery, bound by threads of hope, connection to country, family and traditions, and that there is always, still love.

"It was an opportunity to allow a community to come together through a common theme," Micheal Palmer, convenor of the OBOC event, said.

"A simple exercise of book reading lets us share and consider our common experience, framed against all of our very individual thoughts of this one book.

"We have all been impacted by the recent bushfires with 'home and belonging', or our sense of 'home and belonging', undergoing much change.

"Favel's story is about remembering, about making known what can easily be forgotten - about the importance of remembering and allowing the good, the colourful and the enriching traditions of family to endure.

"A story also about helping 'the difficult' to find a gentle place.

"Our hushed listening showed how deeply we needed to hear this story and find its connection to our own," Mr Palmer said.

Ms Parrett spent time travelling from Batemans Bay to Pambula and was taken aback by the devastation, but also by the beauty, warmth and resilience of the South Coast and its communities.

She shared personal stories and memories about her grandparents and the effects the war left upon them.

She talked about how lucky she was to have them in her life as a child and all the delicious, special things she remembers, such as eating gherkins, going to the shops, their flat in Melbourne that they made into their own little bit of Prague, and the beautiful way that her family loved each other despite their differences and the tensions that the war had left them with.

A screening of the Oud Maker of Narooma, a short independent documentary of an intriguing journey from Morocco to these shores, and musical interludes by the Jackson State Band rounded out a hugely successful event.

One Book One Community is planned to be shared across the Valley again this year.

The OBOC team thanked the Tathra Hotel for its support.