When I first moved to my neighborhood on the west edge of Neosho about five years ago, I wondered about the history. I don’t suppose most people would wonder about the past in a modern subdivision with ranch style homes, just about the closest thing we have to suburbs in our small town but I did. So once I got settled in and all the boxes were unpacked, I decided to determine the history of the land. It didn’t take long once I got started. Using some of the plat maps of the past available in the genealogy room of the Neosho library I found most of what is now the Greenwood Hills subdivision was once a flourishing fruit farm outside town. Just like any good history detective I used this information to trace the owners and connected it to Howard Speakman. Now many local history buffs will know Howard built the lovely old brick home on West Spring Street back in 1904 and although Howard died the next year, the house remained in the Speakman family until around 1920. Since then, it’s had various owners but since it always reminded me of my childhood home back in St. Joseph, Missouri, I’ve always admired the house. Of course, I found the connection intriguing. I collected everything I could about the Speakman fruit farm and Mr. Speakman and although he’s all but forgotten (or unknown) to most Neosho residents today, he did a lot of amazing things for our town including Big Spring Park. He was also at one time president of the Strawberry Growers Association. Rumor or legend holds he built the house on Spring Street with the proceeds from one good strawberry season.
Since I deal with imagination most of the time, I found myself wondering what might have happened if Howard Speakman hadn’t died at the age of thirty-five. I imagined ways he might have improved Neosho and how things could have changed if he left descendants. Before long I found myself – this happens to authors, an occupational hazard – writing a novel based on Howard’s short life and his fruit farm. My story began in the present day when a young history teacher from Kansas City came to Neosho when she inherited the house from the grandfather she never knew. Her mother warned her about ‘the ghost’ but when Lillian, my heroine met him, he wasn’t scary at all but charming. By this point, I strayed far from reality but that’s the nature of fiction. Out this week, In Love’s Own Time (Rebel Ink Press) is a romance but it’s hard to classify. I’ve been telling friends and fans it’s a contemporary/time travel/ghost/paranormal/slipstream/historical romance because it’s all of the above at one portion of the story or another.
Here’s the cover blurb – maybe it explains it best:
There may be no place like home and nothing like love…..when history teacher Lillian Dorsey inherits a three story Edwardian brick mansion from the grandfather who banished her pregnant mother decades before, it’s a no brainer. She’ll visit the place, see it and sell it. Instead Lillian’s captivated by the beautiful home and intrigued by the ghost of the original owner, Howard Speakman. Soon she’s flirting with the charming, witty gentleman who’s been dead for more than a century and before long, they admit it’s a mutual attraction. Still, when she’s alive and he’s dead, any shot at being together seems impossible.
But where there’s a will, there’s a way….one afternoon while pretending to visit the past the impossible becomes a brief reality. If they visited 1904 before, Lillian knows they can do it again and if so, she can prevent Howard’s untimely death. With a combination of love, powerful hope, and stubborn will, Lillian bends time to her will and returns to the summer of 1904. But Howard’s death looms ahead and if she’s to find a happy ending, she must save him from his original death.
Damn!” The aggravation would kill her if the suspense didn’t. Love relationships were hard enough with a flesh and blood partner but Howard’s disappearing act was beyond difficult. There must be some way, she thought, to cross the boundaries of time so she and Howard could be together and Lillian resolved to figure out how.
Although she would rather bawl with frustration, she took action. The local library was the only place which might have the materials she sought so she Googled Einstein’s theories on one of the public computers. What she read led to her read about Goedal, the other Princeton scientist she mentioned to Howard and to others, everyone from Stephen Hawking to Igor D. Novikov. A search of simply “time travel” linked to Washington Irving’s legend of Rip Van Winkle, King Arthur’s daughter Gwenth, to Carroll’s Alice
No one explained how it worked but most acknowledged the possibility. As she surfed the World Wide Web, she jotted down books to read and movies to watch. Dean Koontz wrote a novel about time travel called Lightning and a woman named Diana Gabaldon penned an entire series of novels based on time travel. Movies like Kate and Leopold and Somewhere in Time, the last based on a novel by Richard Matheson, intrigued her.
Lost in research, Lillian didn’t realize how long she’d been there until the librarian tapped her shoulder.
“I’m sorry but we close in fifteen minutes.”
Head aching with fatigue, mind whirling with information, she gathered up her copious notes and walked out to the parking lot. Her car was alone beneath the vapor lights and although she was weary, Lillian was too restless to go home. Instead, she drove across town and up the business highway to where Howard’s farm once existed.
The neat orchards she hoped to find were gone and instead a housing subdivision sprawled over the fertile ground, the foundation of Howard’s fortune. Most of the ranch style homes dated to the late 1950’s or early 1960’s but on the far edges, newer homes ringed the original neighborhood. The railroad track she recalled from her dream and the hills with a few gnarled old apple and peach trees were all remaining of the former fruit farm. The idea brought sadness and Lillian knew Howard’d feel the same. As her headlights swept through the subdivision, she searched for any other signs of Speakman’s Farm but found none so she retreated to Seven Oaks.
In the humid summer night, her fatigue felt like a heavy blanket and Lillian was almost too tired to drag herself up the stairs. As she wandered through the dark downstairs rooms, she called his name but Howard didn’t answer. Missing him was an ache and so weary, emotions drained, she lay down across the bed, too tired to even undress and fell asleep.
Shadows of the tree branches made lacy silhouettes across the ceiling of the bedroom when she woke, moving shadows dancing with the wind. Although she’d no clue what time of day it might be, Lillian felt too somnolent to rise so she lay, tangled in the bedspread and tried to sort her myriad emotions. Joy at Howard’s declaration of love dimmed when she considered the difficulties of their unique relationship and a strange prickling delight came as she remembered visiting 1904. As the wind rushed through the trees like whispers, she struggled to make sense of time travel, to figure out a way to make it possible on a permanent basis.
Details, theories, and thoughts warred until she sat up, limbs protesting the motion after too many hours of deep sleep, with a revelation. They didn’t need the books, she wouldn’t have to know the properties of relativity after all, and there was no set format certain to succeed. It didn’t matter because she’d done it. If they managed once to travel to the past without trying, they could and would by design.
“Elementary, my dear Watson,” Lillian murmured, stretching as she swung her legs to the floor. “It’s simple, really.”
With one ear cocked for any sound to indicate Howard’s return, Lillian bathed and dressed, brushing her teeth to rid her mouth of an unpleasant film coating both teeth and gums. She picked up her watch from the dresser and nodded. It was just now noon; she’d not slept away as much of the day as she’d guessed, a good thing since she needed to handle many details. Singing, she floated with elation downstairs to make coffee and a list. Time travel was possible and she’d do it or die. Either way, she’d end up Howard.
By the time, he appeared, dapper in a blue and white checked Madras shirt worn over dark brown trousers held up with suspenders striped the same colors as the shirt, she’d scribbled half a notebook full of things to do or buy or look up. Intent on the next item, she didn’t realize he was with her until she felt his spirit caress, light as a breath, across the back of her neck.
“What are you plotting, my dear heart?” He asked, sitting down across the kitchen table.
“We can do it, Howard.” She put down her pen to reach out for his hand and then remembered she couldn’t hold it. “Time travel, I mean. All we have to do is believe it and live it. If we could do it when we were just pretending, we can do it. Everything has to be just right and I’ve so many things to get and things to do but we can. Isn’t it wonderful?”
Purchase Links:
http://www.amazon.com/In-Loves-Own-Time-ebook/dp/B007A209G6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329492235&sr=8-1
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