Böcker av Cyndi Tillery Hodges

You don't always get what you want in life, and no one knows that better than Lizzie Baker. Her only wish is to go home, but in order to do so, she has to find the one light on Brown Mountain that transported her back in time from 1969 to 1859. When Lizzie's one opportunity is thwarted, she remains trapped in the antebellum South, a time she's come to loathe, but that's not the only reason she's anxious to return home. The Civil War looms ever closer and she is frantic to leave before the deadliest and bloodiest conflict in American history descends on Brown Mountain. Lizzie spends her days helping the Collins sisters doctor the people on Brown Mountain and in the little town of Morganton, North Carolina. While learning about the natural healing methods the sisters' use, she teaches them the more modern medicine she learned in medical school.But it's the nights that keep Lizzie going, searching the mountain with her best friend Abbie to find the one light that can take her home and engaging in secret meetings with Josh Hampton, a plantation owner's son, risking her life as she helps him lead slaves to freedom. As time goes by, Lizzie begins to care deeply for Josh, enough that she questions what she will do if the opportunity to go back to her time ever presents itself. Will she step into the light or will she choose to stay with Josh? She fears that when the time comes, she will only have a split second to make that decision and can only pray it will be the right one.

"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 in 1864, Lizzie, her friend Abbie Collins and fiancé Josh Hampton encounter a light Lizzie believes is hers. Hoping to get to safety, she pushes Abbie into the light, expecting Josh to follow. She and Abbie wake to find that this is not the Brown Mountain they remember. Trees and foliage are dying, the air smells like ash, 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 her fiancé, she and Abbie encounter Jonah Hampton, a man who bears a startling resemblance to Josh. Upon learning that one of Jonah's ancestors married a Collins, Lizzie begins to suspect that Josh did not come after her but, for some unexplainable reason, married and had children with Abbie's sister Sarie instead. Once more, Lizzie resorts to practicing herbal medicine by day while frantically searching for the lights by night, although is concerned that going back to Josh could possibly end the existence of people she's come to care for. To make matters worse, her tenuous relationship with Jonah sets in motion a perilous encounter with an enemy from her past that could lead to her death.Lizzie faces a hard decision as she continues to pursue the lights, one that will determine her fate for the rest of her life if she finds them: to stay in the 21st century where a war within America looms on the horizon, go back to the 19th century 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.

In the mid 1920s, Bessie Elliott and her husband Fletcher take in their six-year-old nephew John. They are determined to give him a warm and secure home on Stone Mountain, a place where he will feel loved and know he is always welcome.Having a child brings many changes to their daily life and even more for John, but it isn't long before he feels completely at home with his aunt and uncle. As he learns about the farm animals, the wildlife and plant life on the mountain, he grows into a young man Bessie and Fletch are proud to call their own.But their life is not without turmoil. Bessie's healing skills are put to the test when she and Doc Widby deal with an unknown and mysterious illness, one they have no idea how to treat. While doing their best to heal their patient, they run up against a new doctor in Black Mountain who is involved with the Eugenics movement, a program Bessie fiercely opposes. And Bessie and Fletch, along with the rest of their neighbors, are torn apart by a foe threatening the natural beauty of Stone Mountain.