Camp Lake (Carson Chronicles #5) by John A Heldt-Review, Guest Post & Giveaway
CAMP LAKE
The Carson Chronicles #5
by John A Heldt
Release Date: September 30, 2019
Genre: time travel, romance
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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date: September 30, 2019
Phoenix, Spring 1983. For the Carsons, five siblings from the present day, it has come down to this. Find the parents they have chased through time for more than two years or go home and resume their lives without them.
While Adam and Greg remain in Arizona and Natalie searches the country for leads, Cody and Caitlin travel to a summer camp in Maine, where their mother and father met as counselors. The twins, now 19, hope to intercept the older versions of their parents even as they work beside the younger ones.
All of the Carsons prepare for a reunion that seems inevitable. Then tragedy strikes one family member and seductive strangers pull two others in unhelpful directions as a summer of promise turns into one of uncertainty and sacrifice.
Filled with humor, romance, and heartbreak, CAMP LAKE, the poignant conclusion of the Carson Chronicles series, follows the lives of several spirited adults as they confront choices and change the era of big hair, space shuttles, and video arcades.
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REVIEW:CAMP LAKE is the fifth and final instalment in John A Heldt’s CARSON CHRONICLES time travel romance series focusing on the Carson family.
SOME BACKGROUND: The Carson Chronicles focuses on the Carson siblings, a family of time travellers, as they search for their missing parents Tim and Caroline Carson. Months earlier, the siblings discovered their parents had disappeared but an itinerary of places and timelines found the family on a journey of their own. Starting in 2017, the siblings travelled back in time to 1889, 1918, the tumultuous era of 1943-44, 1962 where the Cuban Missile Crisis is about to unfold, and presently arriving in 1983.
Told from several third person perspectives CAMP LAKE is the culmination of twenty-eight months ‘on the road’ as the Carson siblings search for their missing parents Tim and Caroline Carson. The year is 1983, and the family have crossed paths on numerous occasions without running into one another. At Camp Lake, a summer camp where Tim and Caroline Carson first met and fell in love, twins Caitlin and Cody Carson, as well as Caitilin’s lover Dennis Sawyer, find themselves working as camp counsellors, where they will meet the younger version of their now missing parents. But things don’t go according to plans when their parents’ romance is threatened by someone else.
At Camp Lake, Cody, the lone single sibling, believes he has met his future, in the past. Karen O’Reilly, the camp botanist, pulls Cody in like a moth to a flame, but not all is well in Karen’s world, and Cody is about to discover that his previously shattered heart is about to be broken, once again.
Meanwhile, Tim and Caroline Carson believe they have located their children but once again, paths will be crossed, as the siblings continue their search one step ahead of, or behind, their missing parents.
CAMP LAKE and the Carson Chronicles is an imaginative and original series; a cleverly written story of family, struggle, memories and love. Unlike the previous instalments, 1983 is but a year wherein the family takes center stage-history is barely afforded a mention. An engaging and enchanting story line, CAMP LAKE and the Carson Chronicles is an energetic, animated and brilliant addition to your reading library.
Reading Order and Previous Reviews
River Rising
The Memory Tree
Indian Paintbrush
Caitlin’s Song
Copy supplied for review
Reviewed by Sandy
As one who has written fifteen novels that blend both fact and fiction, I know firsthand the importance of getting it right. Writing about time travel, after all, requires more than describing the means of travel. It requires accurately depicting the past. It requires meeting the standards of quality historical fiction.
The challenges are often daunting, particularly when writing about the recent past, as I have done on multiple occasions. When writing about places and times that are in the living memory of many readers, you have to make an extra effort to get even the little things right.
When I wrote my first novel, The Mine, a story set mostly in Seattle in 1941, a few older readers gently reminded me that chocolate-chip cookies were more commonly called “Toll House cookies” and that aluminum foil was generally called “tin foil,” even after aluminum replaced tin as its primary component. Since that time, I have done what I could to ensure the historical accuracy of my books, which have spanned eras ranging from the 1880s to the 1980s.
Like many writers of historical fiction, I favor primary sources, such as newspapers, documents, letters, photographs, and oral histories. I generally find eyewitness accounts of events and eras, produced by those who lived through them, to be more compelling than even the best research compiled decades – or even a few years – after the fact.
Even so, I don’t limit myself. When preparing to write about times I did not experience, I will often sample the movies, music, and literature of the day. I find it easier to describe Americans of the 1950s and early 1960s, for example, if I immerse myself in the very things that drove them to theaters, concert halls, and libraries.
On some occasions, I look closer to home. When writing The Journey, set in 1979 and 1980, and Camp Lake, my newest book, set in 1983, I relied mostly on memories of — and mementos from — my senior year of high school and my experience at a summer camp in Maine.
No matter where I turn for answers, however, I follow advice that has been around for decades. When writing historical fiction, even in the context of time travel, pay attention to details. Note the nuances and the particulars. Sweat the small stuff.
~~John A Heldt~~
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I’m a married father of two grown daughters and a son and, as of August 15, the grandfather of a delightful little girl named Stella. Before turning to novel writing in 2011, I worked as a sports writer and editor for several newspapers in Oregon and Washington, where I was born and raised, and several more years as a reference librarian in Montana. I love traveling around the western United States, watching sports, cooking, and experiencing the great outdoors. I currently make my home in the Las Vegas, Nevada, area.
John A Heldt is graciously offering the complete CARSON CHRONICLES 5 ebook time travel series (mobi or epub) to ONE (1) lucky commenter at The Reading Cafe
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