ACROSS THE COUNTRY
For Fans of Nicholas Sparks, This North Carolina City Is the Capital of Love
The best-selling author based “The Notebook” and other heart-tugging novels in New Bern, where he lives. But what makes the town so romantic?
WHY WE’RE HERE
We’re exploring how America defines itself one place at a time. One city in eastern North Carolina has many people falling head over heels for its old-fashioned charm.
Before Brittnee Provencher fell in love, before saying “I do” to her husband on their wedding day, she was a teenage girl in Norwich, Conn., getting lost in the books of one of the world’s best-known romance novelists: Nicholas Sparks.
She had relished every love story he wrote, many of which either mentioned or were based in New Bern, N.C., a small city wedged between two rivers, where Mr. Sparks had moved decades ago.
Years later, when Ms. Provencher was eager to find a new home where her own story could unfurl, she proposed an idea to her then-fiancé, Ian. What if they moved to New Bern, stepping into the real-life version of a Sparks novel? In 2021, they packed their bags, stacked Mr. Sparks’s books in the trunk and drove down.
The Provenchers, who eventually got married in New Bern, are not the only ones who have sought out the city of about 31,000 in eastern North Carolina, chasing the Southern romanticism that oozes from the books. Every year, local officials said, hundreds of couples and Sparks fans visit New Bern to experience its old-fashioned charm, and to explore why it inspired “The Notebook” and other heart-tugging tales steeped in earnestness.