Time Travel – Getting it Right by Augustina Van Hoven

The Write Way Café welcomes Augustina Van Hoven. She shares her approach to writing A Second Chance, a time travel novel.

I love time travel.  The concept absolutely fascinates me.  I often daydream what it would like to meet famous people in the past or witness some historical event.  Don’t forget about time traveling to the future to see when we are going to have flying cars or colonize other planets?

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 shortcut 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 fourth-dimensional element.

Writing a time travel story requires as much research as writing a historical novel.  A Second Chance, the first novel in my time travel series, takes place in the town of Atlanta, Idaho.  The town sits on the middle fork of the Boise River.  I discovered it over 20 years ago.  At the time, I wanted to buy an antique wood cook stove and was searching through the auction ads in the paper.  I ran across one advertised in a huge auction in Atlanta and traveled there.  I still have the Monarch cook stove.

It isn’t easy to get to Atlanta.  It’s located at the end of a forty-two mile, unpaved, forest service road.  The road wanders through forest, over stream beds, hugging the ridgeline, traveling in switchbacks down to the river, and then follows the river into the town.

I did a lot of consulting with the Idaho Historic Society to get information on the area.  They provided me with copies of newspaper articles written during that time.  The Idaho Statesman, the paper my heroine works for, existed in 1876.  Gold was discovered in 1864 and most of the gold mined in Idaho came from this region.  In 1876, the town had a population of five-hundred and boasted two hotels, two saloons, a brewery and a sawmill.  It had its own doctor, druggist, and barber.  There are still active mining claims in the area, but the current year-round population is about forty.

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.

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 were 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 heroine must navigate.

How does a woman who is used to having her independence and modern conveniences, 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?

Would you ever want to travel through time?  Where would you like to go?

Can a person learn to live and love again?
     A single moment changed Jessica Winters’ life forever… a drunken driver crossed over the centerline and stole the lives of her husband and her little boy. Now, she is trying to find meaning in her life, and she has immersed herself into the world of journalism. While on her way to cover a story, she swerves to miss a deer, and loses control of her car.
     When she awakens, everything has changed—even the century.
     Captain Harlan Jefferson Baylor had found Jessica, unconscious and, to his eye, half-dressed, and he had taken her to the only person he thought would offer help: the local madam. But he’s intrigued by her, and it’s the first time that’s happened since his wife and child died during the Civil War.
     With Harley’s help, Jessica must piece together a new life in the rough, antiquated town. She soon realizes that he not only holds the key to her return to her former life, but he may also hold the key to her heart. 

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Augustina Van Hoven was born in The Netherlands and currently resides in the Pacific Northwest with her husband, two dogs and three cats.   She is an avid reader of romance, science fiction and fantasy.  When she’s not writing she likes to work in her garden or in the winter months crochet and knit on her knitting machines.  

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