The series is time-travel romance after all, so the characters understandably all fall in love once they get here and consequently, choose not to return to their own time. All of the characters are somehow connected to each other and thus create a large crux of family/friends that is inviting and entertaining.
Jackson's books are fairly clean and infused with humor – imagine landing back in 1863 Harrisburg, Penn., with your glasses, iPhone, iPod, backpack, some aspirin and a plastic water bottle – what would a 19th century person think upon meeting you?
Jackson's characters are written the way she wants them to act – in other words – the 19th century men and women accept these 21st century people almost immediately and there's an almost instantaneous "draw" between a man and a woman who has traveled and who is a "native" of the times, so that they fall in love. They're Jackson's characters, her books, who am I to question the whys and wherefores that make no sense to me.
Questions I've had about the characters are typical for me – an historian and researcher and someone whose mind is always turning. How can the characters give up life in the 21st century, their day-to-day living, family, friends? Jackson makes it easy – they all fall in love and do not want to return.
To read time travel, you can't get wrapped up in the whole scenario of the fact a person was alive in 2008 one minute and then alive in 1863 the other minute, thus actually "dead" in 2008 in reality.
It boggles the mind, especially when one character returned to modern times, followed by the Indian tracker who was native to the 19th century and in the space of a few hours, they left friends and loved ones alive in the past, only to travel forward in time and know that their friends have, in truth, been dead for about 75 years.
Try wrapping your head around it.
Time travel books have always fascinated me because of the idea of going back in time and the possibility of meeting an ancestor or even changing events.
The characters in Jackson's books are slapped right down in the middle of the Civil War, and the first character happens to be an expert on the war, specializing in Abraham Lincoln.
So what do you do when you arrive back in 1863 and know that Lincoln is going to be assassinated? Do you stop it or not? Do you alter history or not? What if you did? What would be the consequences?
I won't spoil the ending for Jackson's series, but suffice it to say, they had me hook, line and sinker. They involved recurring characters and a storyline that held me captivated, thus keeping my mind off of my troubles.
What if I traveled back in time? Would I be able to change my own family's history?
My maternal grandmother, Edna, died when my mother was just 18 months old – during the summer of 1918 – of unsanitary childbirth conditions. The baby boy she was delivering was stillborn.
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| Author's grandmother, circa 1917. |
My grandfather had courted Edna for a very long time. I have found sweetheart correspondence going back to 1908 between the two when they were 15. They were married in 1916 when both were 23 and Edna died at 25. My mother was born in early 1917 and left without a mother. Her father was devastated and found himself a widower at 25 with a young daughter during war time. He immediately packed up and left for the war, leaving my mother in the care of his family and her maternal grandmother.
Grandpa returned from war and in 1920 he remarried. He and his new wife had six children – three daughters and three sons – one daughter only lived a few years before dying. Four of their children went on to marry and have children – my oldest aunt had eight children, who all married and had children of their own.
If Edna had lived, none of my mother's half-siblings would have been born or married and had their children, who have had their own children and so on.
Yes, it cramps the mind just thinking about it.
The few photos of Edna show her to be a rather ethereal woman – delicate looking, beautiful and graceful. The photos of her holding my mother tear at my heart. My mother never remembered her, yet Edna clearly loved my mother and was torn from her at a young age.
Over the years, I've found myself absorbed in the few photos of Edna – torn from her life far too young.
I've heard from my two aunts that my grandfather truly never recovered from the loss of his first love, despite remarrying and having more children. He became an angry, bitter man.
And Edna's mother never forgave him for whatever occurred in those days after Edna birthed the stillborn child, became sick and died. We've heard that Grandpa was late in calling the doctor back and did not tell the doctor's wife why he was calling. It was a judgment call that ended my grandmother's life, and Grandpa had to live with the consequences.
Many women died like Edna did – at home, bleeding to death from a doctor or midwife using dirty hands to deliver a child. It was a fairly common occurrence then.
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| My grandfather holding my mother as a newborn in 1917. |
My step-grandmother's mother was mean to my mother – treating her pretty much like Cinderella's stepmother treated her. My mother was beaten frequently and forced to work hard while the adult women did nothing. My mother was not permitted to eat until after everyone else, thus she hoarded food as an adult and had known what it was like to "want."
My mother was given doses of kerosene (or turpentine - not sure which) when she was a child so she wouldn't wet the bed. Eventually, she lost her sense of smell – we always wondered if it was a side effect of taking the bed wetting remedy.
When Mom was around 13, she'd had enough and told her father that the beatings had to stop or she'd throw herself under the train that ran through their neighborhood.
Grandpa allegedly made the beatings stop, but turned around and refused to allow my mother to go to school past the eighth grade. No amount of cajoling would get him to change his mind despite one of my mother's great-aunt's offering to pay her way.
So, my mother packed up and left home – moving in with her best friend's family, who were much more well-off and who hired her as a live-in helper.
It was through this family that my mother began attending church – and where she eventually met my father in 1938 when he came to the same church as a young preacher.
The shy, young, evangelical preacher fell in love with the shy, young motherless girl and they married in 1939.
As a result of their union – my brother, my late sister and I were born.
If Edna had lived back in 1918, would my mother have ever met my dad? Edna was raised in a different church in a different part of town.
Some would say it was God's will for my parents to meet and so He would have found a way for it to happen, even if Edna had lived.
So, the question remains of time travel.
If I were to travel back in time to before my grandmother's death in 1918, would I, or could I change that history? Could I walk in their front door and introduce myself as Edna's future granddaughter and implore her and my grandfather to change how the birth process would go? Could I convince them that their baby would be stillborn and that I would, 71 years later experience very nearly the same thing – the stillborn birth being a genetic defect. (lucky for me that my son had the benefit of late 20th century medicine and was born healthy)
If I changed my own family history, would I cease to exist? And, thus doing so, my dear, sweet aunts, their children and grandchildren would also cease to exist.
While God has given us free will to make decisions in our lives, we make those choices, often suffering dire consequences.
It could be that God would have found a way for my parents to meet had Edna lived.
But the idea that my beloved aunts might not have existed, my dear cousins not have been born and all the lives affected by something as simple as my grandfather choosing not to call the doctor early on when his wife was dying, can truly be a life-altering decision.
What would you do?
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