Time & Again

The Owen family's preoccupation with 'baseball hero and pitching superstar' Kyle leaves 15-year-old Kate resentful and determined to spend the summer with her grandparents at Shady Oaks farm in the Ottawa Valley to avoid another summer baseball camp in Colorado. Kate candidly admits 'it wasn't really Kyle that bugged me; it was her [Mom] and her attitude toward everything I did these days.' Reluctantly, her parents agree and she leaves with plans to 'wander and daydream and birdwatch.' However, reality destroys her imagined idyllic farm retreat when Kate sees the for sale sign and learns that Gramps's health problems have precipitated enormous changes. Kate resolves to 'find a way to fix things.'

Kate's first restless night brings nightmares of ghostly figures with an overwhelming sense of sadness and urgency. The following day while rummaging around in the attic, Kate discovers the family Bible, and in it is a letter in the handwriting of her namesake, Great-Aunt Katherine. The letter speaks of betrayal, hidden treasure, and 'time running out.' This hint of a mystery in her family's history captures Kate's imagination and she experiences several unsettling episodes in which she senses otherworldly presences. Doggedly, Kate follows the letter clues to search for the treasure and enlists help from Ethan, one of two farmhands Gram has hired to keep the farm operational for the summer. Kate alternately suspects Mark and Ethan until, in a satisfying climax, she discovers the villain and not only stymies his schemes, but finds solutions to the farm crisis and her own personal issues.

Loughead's second young-adult novel combines the supernatural with the realistic in a well-developed and charming story. Kate is a fully realized character with typical teen angst and self-absorption, yet awkwardly anxious to help others and be more understanding. Recommended.

Kate is a very convincing teenage narrator, sulky and self-justifying without being tedious, her unhappiness grounded in genuine grievance but not, she comes to realize, nearly as serious as some other people's problems. The motif of a lost family treasure is kept realistic; when discovered, it doesn't save the day, consisting merely of a farm woman's savings from circa 1936, though the old banknotes do have some value and will be a bit of help to her grandparents.

The romance element of the story is subtle and very well handled, both in the positive relationship that develops between Ethan and Kate, and in the empty and manipulative ones in present and past between Mark and Sarah, and Kathleen and the man who unintentionally caused her death. Loughead does a good job of describing the physical and emotional symptoms and experience of first attractions.

... the book tells a tale enjoyable both as that of a cranky teen coming to terms with her family and of a family mystery solved. In the classroom, it could have a place among the many variations on the coming-of-age theme.