by Augustina Van Hoven
Time travel has always been a fantasy of mine. Imagine being able to witness historical events or meet famous people. How about traveling to the future and finding out when we are going to have flying cars or colonize other planets? I would love to be able to do this.
In the scientific community, there is some argument on whether time travel is possible. The hypothetical theory for it is called an Einstein-Rosen bridge, otherwise known as a wormhole. A wormhole is a short cut through the space-time continuum. It acts like a tunnel connecting two places in three-dimensional space, the present, and the past or future, with time as the forth-dimensional element.
In my new Love through Time series, I explore the idea that there are natural occurring wormholes in time. My heroine in A SECOND CHANCE, accidentally falls through one and ends up in 1876.
Writing a time travel story involves a lot of research. You have to know and understand the environment that your character will be living in to make it a good story. The other aspect of a time travel novel is the fish out of water. Imagine, for a moment, that you suddenly found yourself in the past. All the everyday things that you are used to haven’t even been thought of let alone invented. That is part of what my character, Jessica Winters, has to face when she finds herself in the old mining town of Atlanta, Idaho.
In 1876, Edison was still perfecting his telephone. The carbon arc lamp was the first practical electric light in use, but only in larger cities. Women’s clothing included a long line bodice and hemlines that reached the floor. Freedoms and socially acceptable behavior was different. Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch established the germ theory of disease in 1870 but it is not widely practiced. The first city to have a comprehensive sewer system was Chicago in 1885. All these facts and many others are part of the world my character must navigate.
How does a woman who is used to having her independence and carrying a smartphone with text messaging, internet access, audio and video streaming, an eReader, and social media outlets, cope in a world that hasn’t even seen the invention of the telegraph, the radio or given women the right to vote? And how does she fall in love with a man who fought in the Civil War?
These are some of the questions I had to ask and answer while I was writing. A SECOND CHANCE, releases on October 10th.
What if you could travel back in time, where would you go?