Chasing the Brown Mountain Lights

“I’m a Stranger Here” could be the song title guiding Lizzie Baker’s life. In the five years she spent on Brown Mountain during the Civil War, Lizzie wanted nothing more than to find the light that transported her back in time and return to the 20th century. While fleeing from bushwhackers, Lizzie, her friend Abbie Collins and fiancé Josh Hampton encounter a light Lizzie believes is hers. She pushes Abbie into it, expecting Josh to follow. Lizzie and Abbie wake to find that this is not the Brown Mountain they remember. Trees and foliage are dying, the air smells like ash, and the sky is hazy and dim. And Josh is nowhere to be found.

Shocked to learn they’ve gone forward to the 21st century, Lizzie finds this time strikingly similar to that of the 19th as the people on the mountain fight for existence in a world that is dangerous and barely survivable. While searching for Josh, she and Abbie encounter a man named Jonah Hampton who could be Josh’s twin. Upon meeting Jonah’s sister, who bears a striking resemblance to Abbie’s sister Sarie, and who reveals that one of their ancestors married a Collins, Lizzie begins to suspect that Josh did not come after her but married Sarie instead.

Lizzie once more resorts to practicing herbal medicine by day while frantically searching for the lights by night, concerned that going back to Josh could possibly end the existence of people she’s come to care for. To make matters worse, her relationship with Jonah sets in motion a perilous encounter with an enemy from her past that could lead to her death.

If the time comes, Lizzie knows she will be faced with a hard decision: to stay in the 21st century with Jonah where a war within America looms on the horizon, go back to Josh and risk ending the lives of those she’s come to love, or return to the comfort and safety of her time in the 20th century. She knows that whatever she chooses, it will determine her fate for the rest of her life.