Zoe Rising

 If you've read and enjoyed Stonewards, by Pam Conrad, you might, like me, be excited to learn there's a sequel, Zoe Rising.  You might also be slightly disappointed--Zoe Louise, the child central to the time travel of the first book, is not present in this one, and we don't learn anything new about her or her story.  Instead, we reconnect with Zoe at summer camp, the first time she's ever been away from home.

When the news breaks that one of the other camper's parents have been killed in a car accident, Zoe becomes consumed by the fear that her grandparents are also somehow at risk.  And this worry sends her travelling back in time...to visit with her own mother when she was a little girl.   Zoe's mother was pretty bad at being a good and present mother, leaving Zoe with her grandparents and only visiting occasionally, seemingly a shell of a person.  

But in the visits Zoe pays to her mother's childhood, she is witness to the horribly traumatic event that change the happy child into the emotionally absent woman, and she strives mightily to alter the course of events.  And is successful, to a point, saving her from what we imagine was the utter horror the little girl of the past might have otherwise endured.

The time travelling makes it hard for Zoe to be a good camper, and everyone is relieved when it's time to go home....and home, for the first time in Zoe's life, now includes her mother...

It's satisfying time travel, and a fine story in general, but somehow it doesn't quite hit the emotional high points that would make any more powerful.  So although I enjoyed it just fine, I probably will never feel the need to re-read it.