An expansive, time-travel tale of mystery and romance that follows a couple across centuries.

Libby Shaw has built her life on logic.

As a newlywed, an FBI agent, and a brilliant linguist trained to decode the world’s most dangerous secrets, she trusts facts, evidence, and reason. Not superstition. Not fate. And certainly not prophecy.

So when a cryptic warning predicts her death under the next full moon, she dismisses it.

Until the signs line up.
Until the fear becomes undeniable.
Until logic fails her completely.

Desperate to survive, Libby follows one irrational piece of advice: submerge herself in healing mineral waters when the moon is high.

The water saves her life by taking her to a new time.

When she emerges, the year is 1926 — a glittering world of jazz, speakeasies, and secrets buried deeper than Prohibition liquor. And waiting for her is a sheriff who looks at her like he’s known her forever.

He knows her name.
Her laugh.
Her heart.

And somehow… her soul.

But something else followed her through time — a master criminal determined to rewrite fate itself and keep them apart. Now Libby and the sheriff must untangle a mystery spanning three centuries, or risk losing each other again and again… for eternity.

Because some souls don’t meet for the first time.

Instead, they find each other again.

Meet the Main Characters

LIBBY SHAW: 29-year-old linguist and interpreter for the FBI. She marries new love Andrew Grey after learning she is dying. To save her life, she “takes the water” in mineral springs, but emerges in 1926, discovering dangers and people(!) associated with the Matryoshka investigation she left behind in the future! She longs to be reunited with her husband, until she meets an intriguing stranger in her new town. Libby desires to develop a new life and career in her new environment/era, and to resolve the deception that kept her from her real husband.

ANDREW GREY: FBI agent and computer forensics expert, and new husband of Libby. He helps Libby save her life by “taking the water” at a medicinal spring. He will stop at nothing to be reunited with her, and to reclaim what he believes is rightfully his.

NATHAN MCKENZIE: young frontier explorer who is shot when encountering a fiend. He “takes the water,” coming forward in time to the 1920s and becoming new local sheriff, Brogan Harrow. He longs to make sense of his past, which includes a stint as Mohawk-captive Broken Arrow, after he set out into the wilds of unsettled America to bring back kidnap victim Elisa Macay whom he later marries. But their time together was tragically short, and he longs to have her back.

COLETTE MA: FBI agent. Shares an apartment with Libby. Readers learn Colette has been investigating a mole in the Bureau. She hails from a long line of FBI agents. Colette is sharp, feisty, acerbic, and part of the Bureau’s Specialized Weapons and Tactics team. She hopes to rise through the ranks at the FBI, but finds that the Matryoshka investigation may destroy her opportunities.

DAVIS WHITAKER: Rescues Libby Shaw from the water and pulls her into1926. He took the water in 2008 but has made a life for himself in the 1920s. He is married to Darcie. He longs to help other misled “victims,” but when he meets Libby, he becomes suspicious she may be a conspirator, not a victim.

MAUDE BERGER: A WWI veteran and doctor who brings her patients to the Bedford Springs hotel. Maude becomes Libby’s friend and sounding board at the resort. She is well-educated and strong-willed, making her stand out against the backdrop of pampered, well-heeled flappers and other women of the 1920s. Maude seeks to live an unconventional life in mostly conventional settings; she finds an odd kinship in Libby.

ROSE MORGAN: a maid at the hotel, and a hat designer on her own time. Libby saves her from attempted rape when a hotel guest attacks her. Rose later becomes a lady’s companion to Libby. She desires to learn from Libby’s independence and self-reliance, but struggles with these ‘modern’ notions when she meets and falls in love with N.C.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR CHARLTON SMITH (N.C.): deputy and sidekick of sorts to Nathan. He longs for Rose to return his love, but wrestles with her desire to be independent like Libby.