Character Profile

Summary

Time-travel series about a teenage girl taken back to 1840s California.

Stats

Genre: Teen (13-16 years) high fantasy with threads of political intrigue and romance.

Series length: Three books, plus prequel trilogy (The Kinsman Chronicles)

Violence: Moderate fantasy violence

Magic/Supernatural: Light to moderate supernatural

Romance: Minimal until the end of book 2; moderate after that. 

Christian/spiritual element: Overt allegorical elements

Recommendation: Excellent for boys or girls who enjoy medieval fantasy and high adventure

You might like this book if you liked... 
The Lord of the Rings, Eragon, or books by Chuck Black.

To Purchase

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Opening Lines:

"It's all yours. The apartment. The restaurant. She left it all to you."

I stared at him. I knew I was doing little more than blinking, but so many words came to my head at once . . . and yet none seemed to add up to complete sentences. 

"I'm only seventeen," I finally spit out. Which pretty much summed up all my scattered thoughts. There was no way I could do this alone. How was I supposed to figure out my next steps without my abuela​?

Three Wishes (River of Time: California, Book 1)
by Lisa T. Bergren

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. BECAUSE YOU JUST MIGHT GET IT.

Zara Ruiz is a normal California girl on the verge of graduating from high school and thinking about her dawning future. But when dusk brings a shattering loss—and she discovers a priceless object in the shallows of a tide pool—she is thrust a hundred-and-eighty years into the past. There she meets handsome ranchero Javier de la Ventura—who has big dreams and secret sorrows—along with his enchanting family, in a land that is at once familiar, and yet utterly foreign.

Between cattle rustlers, pirates and a growing call for statehood, it is not a peaceful time to be a Mexican settler in young Alta California. But Zara must decide if she's discovered what she longs for most in the past, or if her heart's THREE WISHES can only be found in the present.

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Opening Lines:

Javier Laughed and shook his head as we reached the top of the sand dune, Centinela loping in a wide circle around us. "I do not know if I can court a girl from the future and have a pet wolf," he said in Spanish. "That is a lot to ask of one man."

I gave him a half-smile, not yet ready to admit it--that I might be his girlfriend, that I might be here to stay--still trying to accept that it seemed I didn't really have another option. 

Four Winds (River of Time: California, Book 2)
by Lisa T. Bergren

Zara Ruiz has never been so happy to have failed at something in her life---trying to return to her own time. In Javier de la Ventura's arms, she knows that 1840 is where she belongs...where she's found true love and family. 

​But then the ranch is viciously attacked, and she and Javier's little brother are kidnapped and she finds herself at the mercy of the FOUR WINDS, no longer certain where her journey might end.

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