David T. Pennington (davidtpennington.com), who works as a computer data analyst in San Francisco, has deep roots in Paradise. According to correspondence received from his mother, Mikki Ashe, "(married to Terry Ashe), formerly of Paradise (yes, of the Terry Ashe Recreation Center)," their son graduated from Paradise High in 1986.
Pennington has written a mind-bending science-fiction thriller. "Peer Through Time" ($12.99 in paperback, self-published; also available as an audiobook and in Amazon Kindle format) is the first of a planned series ("Gravity's Loop" is already published). The story mixes several science-fictional plot devices (wormholes as time portals; mind transfer; the creation of synthetic humans) into a complex tale of murder and mystery.
A small Northern California town named Heaven's Highest Hill (Triple H), a couple hundred miles from San Francisco, plays a key role since, as a news announcer puts it, "the body of resident Sara Drake was found early this morning inside the local branch of Peer Therapies." It is 2079; Peer Industries provides memory simulations for clients so they can relive past moments, and Peer Therapies provides a psychotherapist android, named Kass (now accused of murder).
The town is also the source, in a nearby creek, of a wormhole and its other end that can take a person back in time or into the future. The way it works is that one does not meet one's earlier (or future) self, but displaces that person. Spencer Westmoreland (Sara's ex-husband) discovers the wormhole and, according to one Carmela Akronfleck, "Spencer said he met me in the early 1980s. I was an old woman and I lived in a house known to the neighborhood kids as the Witch's House."
But in 2079 Carmela (whose real name is Carrie Dolphin) is twenty-eight. Yet to come is a long trip back to the late 1930s where she falls in love and receives a series of cryptic messages, the killer's hit list which now targets her mother and sister in 2079. When Carmela discovers who the real killer is, she is able to track down a woman pregnant with his ancestor. What should she do? Can she absolve Kass?
It's a wild ride, and it's not finished yet.
