Erasing a Pandemic
Writers have it easy. They can create and erase a pandemic, they can kill people and bring them back to life, and they can change the trajectory of history. That’s what I set out to do in Broken Portal in Rocky Mountain Park.
Two years ago, when I published my second time travel novel, there was no COVID-19. But for many years I held the thought that a global pandemic could be more destructive than an atomic bomb, or another conventional world war. Here we are in a pandemic like we’ve never seen before. Now, I know, how close my novel came to reality.
But I like happy endings and strong women…so how could I combine them both in a novel about a pandemic? Here is the back blurb on my novel:
1877–a smear of blood. Mutating bacteria. 2017–unrelenting plague. The last pandemic.
The world’s worst nightmare, a disease without a cure–a mutated version of Rocky Mountain spotted fever with an 80% death rate. Can a time traveler change history by destroying the disease at its inception? It’s a gamble, but worth a try.
Venturing into a stone portal, Sophie Anderson travels through time arriving 140 years in the past. She meets Colorado characters: Isabella Bird, a writer and adventurer; One-Eyed Rocky Mountain Jim, a trapper; the Earl of Dunraven, a wealthy Anglo-Irishman; Albert Bierstadt, a famous American artist. Some will help, others will try to kill her.
Sophie’s greatest challenge: destroy the bacteria before it annihilates humanity. Her greatest fear: condemned to a life in the past–unable to return home.
If you have a “curious bone in your body” I think you’ll welcome this weekend read. Please enjoy and let me know what you think by leaving a note here, or reviewing the novel on Amazon. Thank you.