Title: Locked in Time

Locked in Time by Lois Duncan, copyright 1985

Nore has an "uncanny" sense of time. She doesn't need an alarm clock to wake her in the morning, and always knows what time it is. (Of course, this is prior to cell phones, which might make this point moot. On the other hand, it could come in handy if you just know when you wake up in the morning exactly what time it is without a clock around. . .)

Her father has just gotten remarried, much to Nore's surprise. Her father and mother loved each other very much until her mother died just the year before. Suddenly her father, a somewhat famous writer, is in love with this woman who is so unlike Nore's mother, and lives in the bayou in Louisiana on an old plantation. Nore immediately perceives that Lisette, her new step-mother, does not like her and sees her as threat. A threat to what? That's the question. And then there is Nore's new step-siblings, Gabe (who is quite handsome in a teenage sort of way) and Josie, who is 13 and in "that awkward stage". It is Josie who says things that don't always make sense. . . like about the circus fire in 1941 and that she was there. How could she have been there? Why has Nore found 100-year-old pictures of people who looked exactly like Lisette, Josie and Gabe? Not just similar, but exactly. Who are they, really?

I loved this book as a young teen precisely because of the "time" factor. The first time I read this book, I had to know the answers. In addition, I was fascinateds by the idea of immortality. Because I had not yet quite discovered vampire novels, this was a good book that bridged that gap between realistic fiction, time travel, and vampiric immortals in fiction.