Unclaimed Legacy ~ Giveaway and Review

 

Ever since Mother's Day my husband and I have been searching Ancestry.com to try and figure out just how far our own family tree goes back in time. Rumor has it from my husbands side of the family that his distant relative may have been William Clark from the famed Lewis and Clark expedition and that is just where I found myself today after reading Deborah Heal's latest novel, Unclaimed Legacy.

In this sequel to Time and Again: Charotte from Miles Station, we revisit Merri and Abby who have come across quite an unusual computer program that has been installed on Merri's computer called Beautiful Home. With it, they can log into the program in old homes and take a virtual trip back into time and view what life was like for the people who lived in that particular home. Now that they haven't been able to get it to work in the Miles Station home any longer, they think the program has malfunctioned or gotten a virus.

They consult with John Roberts, a young man that helped them out in the first book and whom Abby has a bit of an attraction for to help them fix their computer. He brings along a friend who tells them there is no such program called Beautiful Home and offers to de-bug their computer anyway. Since they can't get the computer program to work anymore they set out to work with a neighborhood boy by the name of Michael who has speech problems and is being bullied at school. When they meet his mother, who is deaf, they make the connection that Michael's speech problem can be fixed by working with a speech therapist by the name of Lucy.

Since Lucy is so busy, she asks Abby and Merri to house sit for her and take care of her young dog named Dr. Bob. While there she reminds them of some older ladies named Beulah and Eulah Edwards, twins who live next door and who are a bit intrusive, harmless and eccentric. She advised them, not to eat anything they cook, since most of the time it's not edible and to help them out whenever they can. It's not until they stay over night that the computer program for Beautiful Home once more is working but this time it's there current residence that has a bit of history to reveal on its own.

This is where to story gets interesting and the reader is taken on a fictional time travel of sorts where the author, Deborah Heal has taken pieces of real life history and woven them into the story to create a fantastic story geared to keep the reader entertained and on the edge of their seat through the whole book. I've been delighted to be given a sneak peek into this sequel due out this year for young adults and have to say I adored every single bit of this. It has just the perfect blend of history and action packed suspense to keep young adults glued to the pages as they work with the characters Abby, Merri and John to uncover a crime from history and a mystery of a secret intruder who stakes out the Shake Rag Corner Stage Coach Inn in the late night hours searching for something.

I received an Unclaimed Legacy compliments of Deborah Heal for my honest opinion and being both a lover of historical fiction and young adult books, I think she has mastered a home run here. This one easily rates a 5 out of 5 stars for me and one I anxiously await our coming school year to have my 13-year-old daughter pick up as both a part of literature and history. I think that's what makes this book so incredible is its ability to translate a love of reading with a fascination for history and I hope it will work it's way to the top of the best seller lists for young adults.

Author Bio:










Deborah Heal is the author of the young adult novel Time and Again. She lives in Waterloo, Illinois, where she enjoys reading, gardening, and learning about southern Illinois history. She is married and has three grown children, three grandchildren, and a canine buddy named Scout (a.k.a. Dr. Bob). Currently, she is working on book three in the Time and Again trilogy.

You may learn more about the author by visiting her website: www.deborahheal.com, her Facebook Fan Page, and Goodreads. Her books may be purchased on Amazon.com.

For more information on this unique and wonderful series of books by Deborah Heal, please click on the links below:

Unclaimed Legacy by Deborah Heal

You can visit Deborah's website by clicking here or you can follow her on Facebook by clicking here. 

Now the best part, Deborah is provided a giveaway copy from her first book, Time and Again to one lucky reader of my blog. Here is an excerpt from that book:

“No…There’s no way that would work. I mean no one could invent a software program that could do that. No way.”

“What are you talking about?” Merrideth said, staring at her.

Abby didn’t answer, but taking the mouse from Merrideth, she placed the cursor on the View icon on the menu bar and clicked. “This is so similar to my brother’s architecture program,” she began, “that maybe we’ll be able to …”

When she clicked on Flip, both girls simultaneously gasped. “…do this,” Abby said with satisfaction.
The screen view had rotated on its vertical axis and now they were seeing the back side of Colonel Miles’ house. White sheets on a clothesline snapped in the wind. A young woman in a long blue dress and bonnet was stooping to pull a wet sheet from the wicker basket at her feet. A gray cat came out of the barn and, stepping delicately through the wet grass, cautiously bypassed the flapping sheets to lay in the sun on the back step.

After a moment of stunned silence, Merrideth said, “It’s her! It’s Charlotte.”

 If you'd love to read my review on Time and Again, simply click here.

Here are your guidelines:

1. Be a follower of my blog, Reviews From The Heart.

2. Like Deborah's book, Unclaimed Legacy and Time and Again on the Amazon page. Simply click the like button next to the title.

3. Be a resident of the US or have a US shipping address. No P.O. Boxes please.

4. Become a follower of Deborah's on her Facebook Fan Page, by clicking here, for an extra chance to enter.

5. Leave a comment below telling me why you'd love to win a copy of this book. Don't forget your email address so I can notify you if you're the lucky winner of this giveaway. You can use the words (at) and (dot) instead of the symbols.

I will notify the winner of the giveaway on October 9th via email so make sure you enter as many times as you want before the 9th!

For more reviews check out the blog schedule below:

Oct 2nd http://www.mybookaddictionandmore.com/be-featured
Oct 3rd http://justanotherrabidreader.info/
Oct 4th: http://justanotherrabidreader.info/
Oct 5th: http://itstimetoreadmamaw.blogspot.com
Oct 8th: www.dianeestrella.com
Oct 9th: http://www.ekfamilybooks.blogspot.com/
Oct 10th: http://cherylsbooknook.blogspot.com/
Oct 11th: http://robyn-campbell.blogspot.com/ Putting Pen to Paper
Oct 12th: http://itstimetoreadmamaw.blogspot.com
Oct 15th: http://www.christianchicksthoughts.blogspot.com/p/book-reviews.html
Oct 16th: http://www.christianchicksthoughts.blogspot.com/p/book-reviews.html
Oct 17th: http://labornotinvain.blogspot.com/
Oct 18th:http://gabina49.wordpress.com/about/
Oct 19th: http://kerrificonline.blogspot.com/
Oct 22nd: http://hottbooks.com/
Oct 23rd: http://myguiltyobsession.blogspot.com/
Oct 24th: http://christianbookshelfreviews.blogspot.com/
Oct 25th: http://thelifeandtimesofwanda.blogspot.com/
Oct 26th: http://thelifeandtimesofwanda.blogspot.com/
Oct 29th: http://hottbooks.com/
Oct 30th: http://allisonsbookbag.wordpress.com/
Oct 31st: www.bloomingwithbooks.blogspot.com
Nov 1st: www.abookloverslibrary.com
Nov 2nd:http://armsofasister.com/
Nov 5th: http://iamareadernotawriter.blogspot.com/
Nov 7th: http://faerytalesarereal.blogspot.com/
Nov 8th: http://ctfdevourer.blogspot.com/2012/08/time-and-again.html
Nov 17th: http://edgychristianfictionlovers.ning.com
Nov 23rd: http://lenanelsondooley.blogspot.com/

Why I Want A WABAC Machine ~ Guest Post from Author: Deborah Heal

WHY I WANT A WABAC MACHINE
by Deborah Heal

Some people I could mention have already started dropping hints about the gifts they want for Christmas. As for me, I’m hoping for a WABAC Machine. I’ve wanted one ever since I saw Sherman and Mr. Peabody’s on our black and white TV when I was a kid. In each episode, Sherman and Mr. Peabody went back in time to a famous event in history, which was always humorously skewed to show what had “really” happened.

My desire to know about the past comes from growing up in an old house, in an old village, both steeped in history.

I grew up in Woodburn, Illinois, an unincorporated village so tiny it only had one store where you could get Wonder Bread, bologna, bacon, Cokes, cookies, and gasoline. Woodburn may have been boring compared to the city we had left behind, but we lived in a cool vintage brick house. I loved that old house for its character, or as I like to say, its “soul.”

And some of that soul seemed to be embodied in what my family still calls "The Brick." We discovered it, engraved with the date the house was built, on the back porch when we moved there. I used to run my fingers over that date, wishing I could go back to see what it was really like so long ago.

Woodburn wasn’t always so small. Once it had been a thriving little town with numerous stores, including the one owned by Mr. Welch, the builder of our house, which had stood where the petunias grew in our front yard. I learned that the brick for our house had been made right there in Woodburn. That where our pasture was, there once had been a livery stable and blacksmith shop. That down the street from us once stood an inn that served as a stagecoach stop. That Abraham Lincoln used to travel through our town and sleep in the inn and in some of the houses.

I used to tell the kids at school that Lincoln had slept in my house too. How I wish that were true. But since the house was built in 1874 that wasn’t likely, unless he had managed to be reincarnated and decided to come back for a visit to Woodburn for old time’s sake.

My brothers and sister and I were thrilled the summer we discovered Mr. Stevenson had an actual stagecoach stored in his old barn. We may have trespassed just a bit to sneak in and explore this wondrous blast from the past.

There are a couple of old houses still standing in the country around Woodburn that were also stagecoach stops. There’s the old Pennington place north of Woodburn, painted blue with white trim. And then Shake Rag Corner, between Woodburn and Brighton. It wasn’t a regular stop. If you wanted to board the coach, someone waved a rag out the window so the driver would know to stop.

I loved imagining the bustling little town. Late at night, I could almost hear the sounds of horses clomping down the street, the stage coach rushing by, the blacksmith clanking out horseshoes. I could read the history books, and I could imagine those earlier days. But I always yearned to know more.

When I grew up and married my husband, I moved two miles up the road from Woodburn to the Heal Farm. One day the county got around to giving our road a name, and with it came a shiny new sign. I got curious about how they came up with the name. Miles Station? What kind of a Station? So I went back to the library to find out.

Amazingly, there used to be a town named Miles Station just down the road from our farm, named, not for a unit of measurement as I had first assumed, but for its founder Jonathan Miles, a pioneer from Kentucky who settled there in 1832. He and his wife had three children, one of them a girl named Charlotte. Today, you’d never know a town once thrived there, but if you look closely, you can see clues.

All that history seeped into my bones as I grew up there in Woodburn. And so, when I sat down to write Time and Again, I told the story of Abby and Merrideth, who live in an old, rundown house in Nowhereville which had in the 1850s been the town of Miles Station. And, although I have never found a WABAC Machine, my characters (Ah, the beauty of fiction!) get to “time-surf” back to see what it was like in the “olden days.”


CLICK TO LEARN MORE:

About Time and Again: Charlotte of Miles Station The History behind Time and Again
About Unclaimed Legacy, the second book in the seriesThe History behind Unclaimed Legacy

About the Author
    Website: http://www.deborahheal.com
    Facebook: http://facebook.com/DeborahHeal

Where to buy the books
    Amazon
    Barnes & Noble

Unclaimed Legacy

Ever since Mother's Day my husband and I have been searching Ancestry.com to try and figure out just how far our own family tree goes back in time. Rumor has it from my husbands side of the family that his distant relative may have been William Clark from the famed Lewis and Clark expedition and that is just where I found myself today after reading Deborah Heal's latest novel, Unclaimed Legacy.

In this sequel to Time and Again: Charotte from Miles Station, we revisit Merri and Abby who have come across quite an unusual computer program that has been installed on Merri's computer called Beautiful Home. With it, they can log into the program in old homes and take a virtual trip back into time and view what life was like for the people who lived in that particular home. Now that they haven't been able to get it to work in the Miles Station home any longer, they think the program has malfunctioned or gotten a virus.

They consult with John Roberts, a young man that helped them out in the first book and whom Abby has a bit of an attraction for to help them fix their computer. He brings along a friend who tells them there is no such program called Beautiful Home and offers to de-bug their computer anyway. Since they can't get the computer program to work anymore they set out to work with a neighborhood boy by the name of Michael who has speech problems and is being bullied at school. When they meet his mother, who is deaf, they make the connection that Michael's speech problem can be fixed by working with a speech therapist by the name of Lucy.

Since Lucy is so busy, she asks Abby and Merri to house sit for her and take care of her young dog named Dr. Bob. While there she reminds them of some older ladies named Beulah and Eulah Edwards, twins who live next door and who are a bit intrusive, harmless and eccentric. She advised them, not to eat anything they cook, since most of the time it's not edible and to help them out whenever they can. It's not until they stay over night that the computer program for Beautiful Home once more is working but this time it's there current residence that has a bit of history to reveal on its own.

This is where to story gets interesting and the reader is taken on a fictional time travel of sorts where the author, Deborah Heal has taken pieces of real life history and woven them into the story to create a fantastic story geared to keep the reader entertained and on the edge of their seat through the whole book. I've been delighted to be given a sneak peek into this sequel due out this year for young adults and have to say I adored every single bit of this. It has just the perfect blend of history and action packed suspense to keep young adults glued to the pages as they work with the characters Abby, Merri and John to uncover a crime from history and a mystery of a secret intruder who stakes out the Shake Rag Corner Stage Coach Inn in the late night hours searching for something.

I received an Unclaimed Legacy compliments of Deborah Heal for my honest opinion and being both a lover of historical fiction and young adult books, I think she has mastered a home run here. This one easily rates a 5 out of 5 stars for me and one I anxiously await our coming school year to have my 13-year-old daughter pick up as both a part of literature and history. I think that's what makes this book so incredible is its ability to translate a love of reading with a fascination for history and I hope it will work it's way to the top of the best seller lists for young adults.

For more information on this unique and wonderful series of books by Deborah Heal, please click on the links below:

Unclaimed Legacy by Deborah Heal

You can visit Deborah's website by clicking here or you can follow her on Facebook by clicking here.

Time and Again: Charlotte of Miles Station

The best part of a young adult book is when they can blend a great story and a bit of a history lesson so well they you don't even realize it. That is just that Time and Again: Charlotte of Miles Station does by Deborah Heal in her debut novel that your middle school child will just fall in love with.

I remember all my summers when I would spend them waiting for our book mobile (that's a portable library on wheels, for you that are wondering) to arrive in our neighborhood and race there just to check out as many books as I was allowed. So it gives me great pleasure when I come across an outstanding book that I would have loved to read as a young adult to recommend to you.



Time and Again: Charlotte of Miles Station is the first book by Deborah Heal with a sequel due out soon that tells us the story of the old town of Miles Station and some of the residents that lived there many years ago. Miles Station is now falling into dis-repair and most of the buildings from long ago are just now foundations of stone crumbling among the overgrown weeds while the streets that ran through town are missing as time and the years have claimed them as well.

Abby Thomas is using her summer to work on her Ambassador College service project by volunteering as a companion and tutor to an economically disadvantaged adolescent for a young girl named Merrideth who has fallen behind in her grades. Her mom, Pat, is going through a difficult divorce and has moved into her Aunt's old home in Miles Station, a small town in Illinois.
While the house is livable, Pat is hoping that in time, she begin to work on renovating the old home back to its former glory some day, but for now it's a home to live in for free.

Merrideth is less than willing to accept Abby, whom she refers to as a babysitter and finds solace in spending her free time watching television, eating Kit Kat candy bars and playing games on her computer. Abby has also been asked to help if she can, to find a way to nurture Merrideth back to a healthier weight in the process of helping her catch up on her school work.

As Abby struggles to find a way to reach Merrideth with less that interesting, musty, old textbooks, she finds that often times the best teacher is interactive learning. She attempts to achieve this by helping Merrideth explore the old house, the surrounding town and through a computer program on Merrideth's computer that mysteriously turns on by itself late at night. What they soon discover through a virtual reality tour program of old homes is that they can take a trip back in time to the girl who used to live in this very house, a girl named Charlotte.

I received this book compliments of Deborah Heal, and have to say this is one of the best books I've had the opportunity to read and review. Being a mom of a middle school child, I can't wait to share this book with her as well. It takes us back in time to a life without technology and shows us a bit of how life was lived in a much simpler time with a bit of history thrown in for an added surprise! I haven't read a book like this and that's why I am so excited to share this one. I think it really speaks to the heart of our children because its able to relate to them and draw them into the story.

I can't wait to read the sequel to this series and I've LOVED reading all about Charlotte along the way. It also shows you how you can reach children who struggle with learning and make it more fun and interesting like Abby does with Merrideth. For me, this one rates a 5 out of 5 stars and look forward to many more novels by Deborah Heal in the future.

For more information on this book, the author and where to pick up this book today, please click on the link below:

Time and Again: Charlotte of Miles Station

• Perfect Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Tate Publishing (January 24, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1613466692
• ISBN-13: 978-1613466698
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches