Alan M. Clark, Stephen C. Merritt & Lorelei Shanno The Blood of Father Time Book Two: The Mystic Clan

The Blood of Father Time Book Two: The Mystic Clan's Grand Plot

Alan M. Clark, Stephen C. Merritt & Lorelei Shannon

Five Star, July 2007, $25.95, 345 pp

ISBN 1594146047

As a youngster, Joel Biggs, accompanied by his friends Mark and Billy, traveled back in time to 1811 Tennessee. Joel always regretted that he couldn't save Mark from a raging river. He and Billy were able to get back to their own time but Billy died young and Joel became an alcoholic. He is drying out at his friend's house when he decides to go back to the past and find Mark. When he makes his move, his friend's seventeen year old daughter Rachel follows; they end up in the 1830's.

They end up staying at a farmhouse teaching the father and his son to read and write. When Jarrett Cotten's men steal two of the farmer's slaves, Joel goes after them; when they meet Cotten takes a shine to him. He tells him that he has a following called the Mystic Clan and their goal is to have the slaves revolt in the south so that he and his followers can steal the plantation owners blind. Joel realizes he is playing the role of Mathew Crenshaw who wrote about Cotten and his plans in order to stop it from happening. He gets a lot of Intel from Cotten before they part ways and he sets out to write the book he read in his own century hoping that this and another plan will break the back of the Mystic Clan.

Although Joel is an adult, this is a great coming of age story. Joel leaves a piece of himself back in the eighteenth century and his need to go back is understood by the audience. Readers will like the tortured hero who meets up with Mark and others who made an impact on his young life when he traveled back to the past the first time (see THE BLOOD OF FATHER TIME BOOK 1). Though Cotton's rambling seems too bodacious bragging, readers will enjoy the continuing adventures of Joel Briggs, past and present, and past.

Harriet Klausner