Carson Chronicles series

In the American Journey series, I told five time-travel tales from the perspective of five twenty-first-century families. In the Carson Chronicles series, I told five from the perspective of one.

For the first time, I sent the same protagonists to markedly different decades, places, and situations and showed how they changed over a span of several years. I entered the wonderful world of saga.

The Carsons of Flagstaff, Arizona, are a family of achievers. Parents Tim and Caroline are professors, oldest son Adam an engineer. Greg and Natalie, the middle children, are an English teacher and a television reporter. Twins Cody and Caitlin are standout high school seniors. For all in the autumn of 2017, life is good.

Then Tim and Caroline disappear on a hike, leading Adam, 27, to search for answers. After learning that his parents are secret time travelers who may be stuck in the past, he leads his siblings on a rescue mission that takes them to 1889, 1918, 1944, 1962, and finally 1983. He commences a cat-and-mouse chase for the ages.

In the Carson Chronicles, I employ not a basement passageway as a time portal, as in the American Journey series, but rather "magic membranes," huge translucent sheets that pop up near strong magnetic fields every three months. I give time travel a creative spin.

I also test the Carsons by putting them in five pressure cookers, stories that test their courage, humanity, and ultimately their resilience as they seek to reunite. I push a family hard for more than two years.

With a few spoilers, here is a look at my third series, a five-book set I published between September 2017 and September 2019.

RIVER RISING (2017): In my eleventh novel, several readers asked a simple question: How could five time travelers, with the benefit of a quality education, settle in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in early 1889 and not know one of history's greatest floods was headed their way?

After speaking to many others, I settled on an answer. The Carson kids did not know about the flood because they grew up in Arizona. Like me and others educated in the West, they learned more about pioneers, railroads, and gold rushes in high school than a mostly localized deluge thousands of miles away.

Even as a history major in college, I had only a rough notion of the event. I knew more about a flood that damaged Heppner, Oregon, in 1903 than the one that hit Johnstown in 1889. Needless to say, I remedied my ignorance. For several months, I read books, watched documentaries, and even traveled to Pennsylvania to learn about the disaster. As a result, I was able to describe the flood like someone who lived through it.

River Rising was my first foray into the 1800s. Set in a century when even phones and cars were novelties, it was the first of my novels to show the shocking limitations of an age. It would not be the last.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 96, flood survivor Natalie Carson wanders through acres of rubble in what was once a thriving community.

The conditions were bad enough. On the morning of June 1, 1889, Johnstown was a sea of squalor, devastation, and hopelessness. In every direction, once sturdy buildings, some fifty feet high, lay in ruins. Fires burned on water. Broken bodies mingled with broken boards. Hungry rats ruled the streets. The stench of death was everywhere.

THE MEMORY TREE (2018): If I broke new ground in River Rising, I plowed a field in The Memory Tree. I scattered my protagonists across two continents, explored different cultures, climbed several family trees, and built a story around a minor character from an earlier book.

In my twelfth novel, the Carsons travel far and wide in 1918. Adam goes to Minnesota, Greg to Mexico, Natalie to France, and Cody and Caitlin to Pennsylvania, where they reunite with Emma Bauer, a 47-year-old matriarch they met as students in Johnstown. All push boundaries galore in pursuit of their missing parents.

The elders do things too. Tim and Caroline meet their ancestors in Duluth and Ensenada. Caroline delivers her own grandmother.

In The Memory Tree, I told a tale set against World War I, the Mexican Revolution, and the Cloquet Fire, a blaze that killed 453 people and displaced 50,000. I threw everything into a 140,000-word novel with 24 settings with ten protagonists.

Along the way, I borrowed from the stories of Andy Hoeme, my maternal grandfather, who lived like Indiana Jones in Baja California, Mexico, from 1918 to 1920. I posted a bit about him on his 120th birthday.

In 2021, illustrator Michelle Argyle revised The Memory Tree's original cover. She did what others did for The Mine and The Mirror.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 103, Greg Carson assesses the pistol-packing firecracker he marries in El Paso on December 17, 1918.

The bride wore white. Standing before her groom, a minister, Adam, Natalie, and thirty guests on a spacious patio that faced the mountains, she wore a white cowgirl dress, a white cowgirl hat, and white cowgirl boots that shimmered in the afternoon light. Greg laughed to himself as he stared at his beaming, pint-sized wife-to-be. Though he thought her Annie Oakley getup was a little over the top, he did not complain. He thought Patricia O'Rourke was the most adorable thing on earth.

INDIAN PAINTBRUSH (2018): In Indian Paintbrush, the first of my "quiet" novels, I set aside natural disasters, turmoil, and even travel and gave the Carsons a break. I let them settle in one place (Phoenix, Arizona), recharge their weary souls, and live a fairly normal life.

Even so, I did not free them from the challenges of the home front during World II or the complications of romance. The younger siblings find employment and love in the middle book of the series, set mostly in 1944.

Natalie and Caitlin find happiness at a training base, where they clean aircraft and befriend dashing pilots Nick Mays and Casey McCoy. Cody finds it at a Japanese internment camp, where he delivers supplies and woos a pretty, spirited teenager named Naoko Watanabe.

Indian Paintbrush is my most thoughtful story, but it is not devoid of spice. It features my best foreplay scene, a car chase worthy of Smokey and the Bandit, and a poignant encounter where Nick comforts a grieving character by quoting lines from Wordsworth's "Intimations of Immortality," my favorite poem. I repeat the "splendor in the grass" passage in a similar scene in Sea Spray, my other "quiet" novel.

The Carsons grow in Indian Paintbrush. Adam and Bridget O'Malley, who marry in River Rising, have a daughter. Greg and Patricia conceive a child. Natalie finds her life mate. The time travelers move on.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 85, Adam Carson tries to drive his family to a Pennsylvania time portal before local police can stop him.

For the next minute, Adam pushed the Chrysler, Nick shot at the cops, Cody pressed his wounded arm, and five other adults looked on in terror. Only Camille, sweet little Camille, managed to cope like a pro. She slept in Bridget's arms like she hadn't a care in the world.

CAITLIN'S SONG (2019): In the Carson Chronicles, each of the five siblings gets a novel. Adam dominates the narrative in River Rising. Greg and Natalie do much the same in The Memory Tree and Indian Paintbrush, respectively. Caitlin gets her turn in book four.

So do college life, the Cuban Missile Crisis, serial killers, and moral quandaries. Each subject receives a thorough examination.

While in 1972, Tim and Caroline learn that Caitlin was murdered in 1962 in Boulder, Colorado, where the Carson children have set up an unplanned residency. Unable to travel to 1962 to save their daughter directly, they race to 1941 to prevent the conception of her killer, the product of a rape. They try to alter a horrifying timeline that seems set in stone.

Because of its dark themes, Caitlin's Song was a difficult book to write. To get it right, I researched subjects I would have preferred to avoid. I built a suspenseful novel around a prospective Ted Bundy.

Caitlin's Song is more than a crime story. It is an often humorous look at college life in 1962, one that covers dating, dorms, and fraternities. Caitlin and Cody, new freshmen, come of age in the book. So does Dennis Sawyer, a fellow student who joins the Carson entourage.

Fun Fact: In each of my 26 novels, the title appears in the text — sometimes often, sometimes not. "The mine" is mentioned 37 times in The Mine. In Caitlin's Song, "Caitlin's song" is referenced only once. Dennis Sawyer utters the words before serenading Caitlin with Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love" at a campus talent show.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 62, Cody Carson, a college freshman, leads twenty boys in a "panty raid" at a nearby girls dormitory.

"This is it, guys," Cody said. "Beyond that door lies twenty rooms, forty girls, and enough panties to fill a department store. When you reach each room, knock twice, give the greeting, and take what the ladies give you. If they shut their doors, let them be. We're not looking for trouble. We're looking for underwear we can use as party props in February."

CAMP LAKE (2019): My fifteenth novel begins with a dream. In 1983 in Phoenix, where the Carson siblings have settled again, Cody has a nightmare about Emma Bauer, Naoko Watanabe, and Molly Perdue, three pretty girls he has loved and lost as a time traveler.

The spirited ladies serve as Cody's jury in his Old West trial for "heart rustling." Emma offers love and forgiveness, Naoko indifference, and Molly unbridled scorn. All tell a "judge" that their former flame has much to answer for.

Though the dream has little to do with the rest of the book, it does serve a purpose. It reminds Cody that romantic relationships are dicey undertakings that offer promise and peril.

Like his siblings in earlier books, Cody finds both in equal measures. In Camp Lake, he discovers that even the love of one's life can come with serious strings.

Inspired by my experience as a camp counselor in Maine in 1983, Camp Lake is the final novel in a five-part family saga. It is a book that features old and young versions of Tim and Caroline, whom Cody, Caitlin, and even Dennis Sawyer meet as camp counselors.

It is also a tale of love, regret, heartbreak, and hope, a story that introduces readers to Karen O'Reilly, a bubbly counselor who catches Cody's eye at camp, a beautiful young woman with cystic fibrosis.

I dedicated Camp Lake to Douglas Susens, my wife's cousin and the namesake of our son Douglas, who is mentioned in my American Journey retrospective. Though Doug battled cystic fibrosis, he attended our 1986 wedding and even participated in wedding weekend activities, such as a float of the Boise (Idaho) River. He died in 1987 at age 23.

As with The Journey and Hannah's Moon, I drew heavily on personal experience in writing Camp Lake. I needed only to consult memories and stories I collected at Camp Cobbossee, a prestigious summer camp that still operates on the wooded shores of Cobbosseecontee Lake.

Favorite Quote: In Chapter 35, Caitlin learns that Cody, her twin and fellow counselor, shares an interest with their married brothers.

"This is unreal," Caitlin said. "It's beyond unreal. I mean first we had O'Malley. Then we had O'Rourke. Now we have O'Reilly. It's like my brothers are chemically addicted to Irish girls."

Though the Carson Chronicles series contains enough tragedy and hardship to fill a truck, it ends on a positive note. The Carsons reunite, the family grows, and Cody and Caitlin get their HEA's. Camp Lake casts a warm eye toward the future. Like the first four books, it ends, fittingly, with the word "forward." Next: The Time Box series.