Your Time My Time

Susan Perks, formerly a teacher and librarian, is a travel agent in
Thompson, Manitoba.

This is the first book by Ann Walsh, a British Columbia poet and short-story writer, and it seems to be a success. Fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Connell’s parents are separating, and Elizabeth is to spend a year in the small town of Wells with her mother. Elizabeth is bored and lonely during the summer, until she discovers nearby Barkerville, a ghost town that had been restored to look as it had in the days of the gold rush.

She finds the Barkerville cemetery particularly fascinating. When she finds a small gold ring there and turns it on her finger, she becomes a time-traveller and goes into the nineteenth century world. In this world she learns about the hardships of the early settler, meets a young man, and falls in love for the first time. The reader wonders: Does the young man really exist? How is this possible? Or is she just imagining this?

These unanswered questions add intrigue to the story, and it is a very hard book to put down. Upon finishing the book, the reader is still unsure: Could this really have happened? How could she have imagined all of this?

The reader makes Barkerville come alive. The characters are believable and the details historically accurate; it is a very entertaining, thought-provoking book for adolescents.