Second Act of Second Chance

The second act is usually the most difficult to write. In literature, as in life, it is the tough center of a story, the important and sometimes unsteady bridge that connects a beginning and an end.

Annie's Apple is my latest second act. The bridge of the Second Chance trilogy, it follows three time travelers and their significant others through the elegant, unpredictable, and often dangerous world of 1911 and 1912. It develops a story in progress.

In the spring of 1911, Bill and Cassie Carpenter, both 29, have it all. The New York City educators have jobs at a prestigious prep school, a new home, and a bright future. They have everything they want except the thing they want the most — a child.

Annie Carpenter, their housemate, is in a similar spot. Though Bill's sister, now a blossoming beauty of 20, has begun a promising career as a society writer, she longs for hearth and home. She yearns for the very things that prompted her to jump into a fountain of youth in 2022 and begin a new life.

Paul Carpenter and Andy Lee also battle disappointment. Now 23, the sergeants, best friends and brothers-in-law, ponder their own futures as they try to keep the Mexican Revolution from spilling into the dusty border town of Douglas, Arizona. They anticipate better things in the final year of their enlistment in the U.S. Army.

Then fortunes change. New orders arrive, romances bloom, and the impossible becomes possible. In a snap, New York City becomes a place where the dreams of five young adults take shape.

In Annie's Apple, I develop these stories. I push the Carpenters and the Lees in ways I didn't in The Fountain. I present different sides of characters I introduced in the first book of the trilogy.

I also present a city. From the first chapter to the last, I give readers the Big Apple in the age of Model T's, Gibson Girls, and bicycles-built-for-two. From Manhattan and Brooklyn to Coney Island and Rockaway Beach, readers see a storied metropolis in its prime.

Unlike in all of my other works, Annie's Apple does not feature an act of time travel. It does feature two disasters. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and the sinking of the RMS Titanic serve as bookends to the character-driven story. Personal trials and a lingering mystery, one that sets up the series finale, fill the spaces in between.

Annie's Apple is my twenty-second novel. It goes on sale today as a Kindle book at Amazon.com and its international web sites.

Author's Note: Today's release is a tribute to my grandfather, a folksy, adventurous, resourceful man who was born April 1, 1893, on a Kansas ranch. Andy Hoeme inspired not only two characters — Andy O'Connell (The Fire) and Andy Lee (Annie's Apple) — but also parts of several books. Whole chapters in The Memory Tree and The Fountain were based on his experiences in Mexico and the American West in the early 1900s. Happy 130th Birthday, Grandpa!