The Summer Solstice by Mary Vine

When I wrote book three of my time travel series, I had to come up with a plausible scenario for how and why some of the characters were able to travel in time. First, I know time travel hasn’t been established but how can I make you romanticize the possibilities?

I enjoy reading time travel stories and don’t particularly care if the transport isn’t at all believable. For example, I read a time travel story where the heroine sat in a dentist’s office getting a tooth fixed when she instantly transported from present day to the wild west in the 1800s. No explanation at all, she simply believed something strange had happened. Or, how about a story where the heroine is standing in a store or on a ledge and vanishes? These scenarios are not what I want in my books. I want something explained in a science fiction way, something that might happen with a portal and advanced technology or perhaps happens in another realm or dimension in the future. At least these ideas have some substance to them. When I researched ideas, I also read about mythology, folklore, and pagans.

The summer solstice is when one of the Earth’s poles has its full tilt toward the sun (the sun is at its highest). It’s the longest day of the year or, we experience the most daylight. The longest daylight, making it the shortest night of the year.

I’ve been walking the earth for a long time and in all those years, I’d heard of the summer solstice, but otherwise didn’t pay much attention. Until I started watching documentaries about the Mayan and Aztecs, that is. There is a temple of Kukulcan at Chich’en Itza in Mexico that was erected in such a way that during the summer solstice the sun casts shadows on the south and west sides so that it looks like the temple is split in two. Yet the sun on the equinox, however, creates a shadow on the temple that looks like a snake descending. I found it interesting that all around the world we find ancient sites that were built so that their structures lined up with star systems or the sun. Obviously, the path of the sun was very important to our early ancestors, and they’ve celebrated for at least 11,000 years, starting in the Middle East.

The summer solstice arrives at a point between the planting and harvesting of crops and gives the people a moment to rest and enjoy the midsummer in various ways.

Pagans believe that the veil between this world and the next was at its thinnest on solstice days and that spirits and fairies were at their most powerful; that day we as humans can, imaginably, exceed the usual limitations of the world.

Above all, old-world solstice celebrations revolve around love (think weddings in June). Making wreaths and ritual items with natural materials, and lighting and jumping over fires. Native American nations and tribes (northern and southern) celebrate more spiritually. And the flow of events is tied to rites of passage, giving thanks to Mother Earth and the Sun.

In the process, I named my third book, in my Gold Club Series, Summer Solstice. All three of the books are together in this one volume.

A Nugget of Time
A Boise newspaper sent Dixie Lea to interview the owner of the largest gold nugget found in a century. While waiting for him in a mining territory of Northeast Oregon, she walks into a man-made cave. Feeling dizzy, she puts a hand to the wall of the tunnel and wakes up alone on a hill with no transportation out of the woods.

Goldbrick
FBI Agent Crawford Stone expects to go hiking in Northeast Oregon but enters a cave and travels back in time to a rowdy gold mining town. He’s not the only one out of place as he finds an attractive woman attempting to ward off the men gathering around her.

Summer Solstice
Emily Stone had prepared for a journey back in time since middle school, when she received a tintype photograph and a letter sent by a relative from the 1870s. Crawford Stone and Dixie Lea are to return to the past on the day of the summer solstice, and she will go, too. To prove herself capable, she practiced the training discipline of parkour and the combat sport Muay Thai. Now totally self-efficient, she receives her master’s in education and can teach anywhere, especially in 1870. She has one year to live in the past. One year, until the next summer solstice comes around and she can return to the future.

Buy link: Gold Club Series Books 1-3: Vine, Mary: 9781952447921: Amazon.com: Books

 

Mary Vine is an author, publisher, speaker and retired educator. She writes contemporary and historical romantic fiction, a time travel series, and inspirational children’s books. Mary, and her husband can usually be found in Southwest Idaho or Northeast Oregon.