Rescue at Fort Edmonton

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

Janey Kane is spending a summer in Edmonton with her grandmother. While
visiting Fort Edmonton, she drops her heirloom locket and is thrown back
in time.

Rita Feutl does a good job of portraying the teenage tension and drama
in both timelines as Janey averts a historical disaster and comes to
terms with her parents’ problems and her grandmother’s cancer. Also,
she has made sure that the facts from the past and the present line up.
However, the time travel seems forced. To travel, Janey must leap into a
construction pit at Fort Edmonton. It’s not clear whether or not she
disappears when she travels. If she does not disappear, why doesn’t
anyone notice a child lying in the pit for hours? If she does disappear,
then why insist on the pit as the portal? Why not just have the locket
trigger a time portal at various places? What would have happened if
construction workers had filled in the pit while she was gone?

Other points are a bit rough, as well. Janey’s prevention of the
disaster is tenuous. A scarf she has given to bush pilot Wop May flaps
behind him, causing him to notice that his plane is on fire, as if he
would not otherwise have noticed it. Further, the scene that should have
been the climax, where Wop May credits Janey with saving the mission, is
played outside of the readers’ view and Janey hears about it
second-hand. Despite these flaws, however, Rescue at Fort Edmonton is an
enjoyable read. Recommended.