Why a Booktrail?
2000s, 1977: If you could change the past, would you?
The Summer of Impossible Things
What you need to know before your trail
Thirty years ago, something terrible happened to Luna’s mother. Something she’s only prepared to reveal after her death.
Now Luna and her sister have a chance to go back to their mother’s birthplace and settle her affairs. But in Brooklyn they find more questions than answers, until something impossible – magical – happens to Luna, and she meets her mother as a young woman back in the summer of 1977.
At first Luna’s thinks she’s going crazy, but if she can truly travel back in time, she can change things. But in doing anything – everything – to save her mother’s life, will she have to sacrifice her own?
Travel Guide
NYC – Bay Ridge
Bay Ridge is not the usual tourist destination in New York, but it’s the neighbourhood where Luna returns to find out about her mother’s past. She roams the streets, clubs and a particular house where she knows her mum has stayed. She immerses herself into the world her mum inhabited and even gets to meet her as a young woman. The world around her now is faded, blurred, like being in a dream…this time travel business merges, smudges what is normal and lets you see a very unique view of how a community has changed and how the people who lived there once have now changed too…
“Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, is nothing like I imagined it would be after a lifetime of watching movies set in New York State. It’s a low, two-storey landscape of wide avenues and neat, wooden-clad houses; small town America, on the edge of a huge borough that lives right next door to the greatest city on earth. New York seems to peer at Bay Ridge over the expanse of the Hudson with an uninterested shrug”
“This is the world where our mother grew up, the world she ran away from”
#Authoronlocation: (image gallery)
#Brooklyn – This is the building the Lupo family home is based on, the location where Luna first falls through time into #1977’Mum’s building, her home. Its crenellated outline cuts into the night sky, windows blank and expressionless….it’s nothing like I imagined before, a dark and ruined castle full of ghosts. It feels like a haven.’
#The statue – This is the statue that inspired the one on Mrs Finkle’s window sill, always watching over the house and it’s inhabitants, always benevolent, a marker of time passing…or is it? ‘A statue of the Virgin Mary greets us. She is about two feet high, balanced on the window sill nearest the door, inclining slightly down towards a considerable drop. She has clearly been in exactly that perilous position for some time….her hands chipped and broken, her eyes white and unseeing.”
#verrazanobridge – the bridge that features often in the book. ‘I grew up watching them build it, Michael says, nodding at the bridge. In my head, when I was a kid, I thought as soon as they finish building that bridge I’m going to run over it as fast I can and get out of here. I sort of thought it would get me anywhere, you know? Anywhere I dreamt of.
Trail Gallery
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
The story of this is so captivating and it hits a spot with me that it got me really emotional. Imagine going back and meeting one of your parents when they were young? Finding out what secret lies in their past before they die in the present day? That got me before I got started but it’s a dream I’ve often had myself – of going back in time like that and meeting someone in my family so I felt myself welling up before I’d even started!
It’s a magical idea and one that Rowan captures like a delicate butterfly, holds in the palm of her hand and then gradually opens to allow it to fly. The secret within is a dark one but what comes out of the pages between this stunning cover is something that will make you smile through your tears.
The language itself sings and the book takes you on a remarkable journey of longing and discovery. What would you do if you could go back to the past and what would you do if it meant risking your own life? A huge dilemma and a riveting read that really left me thinking about my own past and family. It’s a stunning read and a very emotional one. Have hankies to hand and be prepared for your heart to be ringed out of your body, pummelled and then put back in. Still feeling bruised now but what a heartwrenching, powerful read.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Summer of Impossible Things
Author/Guide:Rowan Coleman Destination: NYC, Brookyln
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