The Girl Who Tried to Change History
When a mysterious stranger sat down beside her on a park bench one day in the spring of 2009, Vivienne Riley was thinking only of completing her PhD dissertation in history. Soon, however, she finds herself being recruited into a top-secret experimental program designed to right some of the wrongs of the past by sending time travelers back to the Second World War to attempt to change the future. Vivienne agrees to participate, and soon finds herself on a collision course that imperils her own life and the lives of those she loves. Over the course of her journey into the past, Vivienne finds love, suffers heartbreak, and learns first-hand what it means to live in and survive World War II in London, all the while making a series of well-meaning decisions that may alter the future in ways she cannot imagine. Is it really possible to change history, even with time travel--and even if we could, is it a good idea to try?
Book Description
If you had the chance to go back in time and change the past to help wipe away some of history’s darkest crimes, would you take it? And if you did, what would happen if your actions in the past altered the future in unimaginable ways for you and the people you love?
The Girl Who Tried to Change History is a novel featuring a time-traveling heroine who gets more than she bargained for when she agrees to participate in a complex experiment to alter the history of the twentieth century.
Vivienne Riley is a stressed-out graduate student about to earn her doctorate in European history, with a focus on the Second World War, when she is approached by a mysterious man to join what she refers to as the “Experiment”—an effort by the world’s top scientists to erase the darkest history of World War Two by utilizing new time travel technology to send individuals back to alter that history in different ways. After agreeing to this assignment, Vivienne finds herself transported back to 1939 London and Berlin to carry out her mission to save as many lives as possible before the cataclysmic war begins. She soon befriends a handsome British Royal Air Force pilot named Andrew and a pretty local waitress, Molly, who bears a resemblance to someone she cannot quite recall.
As her relationships with both Andrew and Molly deepen over the course of her time living in World War Two-era London, Vivienne makes the decision not to return to the present day as she’s been ordered, but to stay behind and try to fight the forces of darkness rising in the past as best she can. She lives through the Blitz, the Battle of Britain, and nightly bombings while trying to make a difference in small ways and help those she cares about find happiness. But soon, what seem like innocent decisions spiral out of her control, as she realizes that her well-meaning efforts to help Molly find fulfillment as a young woman in 1940 may imperil her own existence and that of those she loves in the future.
The Girl Who Tried to Change History is a story for fans of World War Two historical fiction, romance, and anyone drawn to reflect on the choices we all make in our lives within the constraints of the time and place in which we are born. Is it really possible to change history, even with time travel, and even if we could, is it a good idea to try?