Synopsis

Seattle, 2010. When her entrepreneur husband dies in an accident, Michelle Preston Richardson, 48, finds herself childless and directionless. She yearns for the simpler days of her youth, before she followed her high school sweetheart down a road that led to limitless riches but little fulfillment, and jumps at a chance to reconnect with her past at a class reunion. But when Michelle returns to Unionville, Oregon, and joins three classmates on a spur-of-the-moment tour of an abandoned mansion, she gets more than she asked for. She enters a mysterious room and is thrown back to 1979.

Distraught and destitute, Michelle finds a job as a secretary at Unionville High, where she guides her spirited younger self, Shelly Preston, and childhood friends through their tumultuous senior year. Along the way, she meets widowed teacher Robert Land and finds the love and happiness she had always sought. But that happiness is threatened when history intervenes and Michelle must act quickly to save those she loves from deadly fates. Filled with humor and heartbreak, THE JOURNEY gives new meaning to friendship, courage, and commitment as it follows an unfulfilled soul through her second shot at life.

Review

I love time travel stories and John Heldt writes some great ones! This is the second in a series but they are not all tied together (although 1, 3 and 5 have the same characters!)

I’ve always wondered, if you could travel back in time, would you change anything about your past? Would you disappear if something happens to your younger you? Michelle (aka Shelly) gets a chance to figure that out when she accidentally ends up in her hometown her senior year of high school. So much happened that year and not all for the best. I liked her interacting with her younger self but not revealing who she really is and spilling the beans. Michelle has a positive influence on not only her younger self, but many of the teens in the small town. It was a different time (1979-80) and kids were different than they are today.

I liked how the story wove in the future and the past and even other people that went missing the same way Michelle did 31 years in the future. The ending is a bit sad, but still had a happy ending.

We give this book 5 paws up!

About the Author

John A. Heldt is a reference librarian and the author of the critically acclaimed Northwest Passage time-travel series. The former award-winning sportswriter and newspaper editor has loved getting subjects and verbs to agree since writing book reports on baseball heroes in grade school. A graduate of the University of Oregon and the University of Iowa, he is an avid fisherman, sports fan, home brewer, and reader of thrillers and historical fiction. When not sending contemporary characters to the not-so-distant past, he weighs in on literature and life on his blog.

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