Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The Prodigal Hour


Is there anyone not fascinated by the notion of time travel?  Whether the pull is simple curiosity about what the past was really like, or wonder about the future one is doomed to miss out on, there is just something irresistible about the possibilities of traveling up and down the time continuum at will.  Or, perhaps, the lure is more personal, a desire to right some personal wrong we have done or suffered, for instance.  Whatever the reason, Will Entrekin is here to tell you to be careful what you wish for – because you might just get it.

If Chance Sowin, the main character of Entrekin’s new novel, The Prodigal Hour, had arrived for work at the World Trade Center just a few minutes earlier, his life might well have ended on September 11, 2001.  Survival, however, does not mean that Chance’s life has not been changed forever.  He is no longer the person that entered the building that morning with his naïve optimism intact.  Chance knows that he is one of the lucky ones, and he feels almost obligated to take charge of his life, to make himself a better man than he was on September 10.  Now, it is a question of where to begin.

Chance is from New Jersey and, when his father asks him to move back home until he can figure out what he wants to do next, Chance decides to take him up on the offer.  For the second time in just a few weeks, though, Chance’s arrival time is fated to get him almost killed.  He gets home just in time to interrupt what appears to be a home invasion by a man threatening his father.  When in the ensuing scuffle his father is shot dead, Chance is left to deal with federal agents who hint that his father may have been working with international terrorists.

That Chance refuses to believe his father, a prominent research scientist, could have been involved in research on behalf of any terrorist group, is not surprising.  The notion is so farfetched that he is not even temporarily shocked by it.  The real shocker for him comes from Cassie, a young woman Chance shared his first kiss with when they were kids: his father has invented a time machine and she knows how to use it. 

Now what?  Should they use the time machine to go back in time to save Chance’s father from being murdered – and what will happen if they do?  If they save Dennis Sowin’s life, will they inadvertently alter the future in a way that causes other innocents to die – perhaps by the thousands?  Thus begins an adventure that will see Chance and Cassie visit some of history’s most intriguing hotspots.  Only when the pair decides to “improve” upon the past, do they get in trouble.  Will they, and the rest of us, survive their not so subtle tinkering with the past?

I enjoyed The Prodigal Hour, my fellow time-traveler wannabes.  I think you will, too.

Rated at: 4.0

(Review Copy provided by Publisher)

6 comments:

  1. I am absolutely fascinated with the idea of time travel! :) I think the lure for many of us would be to go back and unmake the decisions we made that led to bad times in our own lives. The big question, which it sounds like this book addresses, is: "were those mistakes necessary?"

    It's funny, when I look back on the stupid things I did in my life I am beginning to realize that they played an important part in who I am today. If I could go back and do everything right, I'd probably end up being a lesser man today. Fortunately, I won't get the chance to find out! :)

    This sounds like a great book! I'm going to have to keep an eye out for it to come to my library! :)

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  2. Andy, you'll enjoy this one, guaranteed. It gets into the "science" of time travel and all the pros and cons involved, including the risks of changing things that have already happened. Very clever take on the whole thing...

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  3. Thanks for the spot, Sam. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

    And I hope you will if you pick it up, Andy. Sadly, I have to tell you that you won't find it in your library; I'm an independent author, and distribute mainly through Amazon. But it's rather inexpensive through Kindle...

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  4. Well now I'm just so intrigued that I think I will have to buy a copy! :)

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  5. Seems less of a review than an ad. Where's the analysis? Where's the "this works" and "this doesn't work" bits that leads to a four-star review then? That the author had shown up to say he enjoyed a flawless, critique-free review is highly suspect.

    MR

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  6. Anonymous,

    Why do I suspect that you have some kind of personal grudge against Mr. Entrekin? I noticed that both, as in TWO, reviews of the book at Amazon have received one "not helpful" vote each...and zero "helpfuls." That's highly suspect in conjunction with you showing up here to trash a review of what, at this point, is a very obscure novel. Let's face it...you have to know Entrekin personally in order to be this negatively passionate about his work.

    I enjoyed the book. It is as simple as that. I saw no need to contrast its "cons" with its "pros," but chose to let the numerical rating speak for itself.

    It is not an ad. It is an opinion. Your cynicism is misplaced, pal.

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