Mary Spiers
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A Jumble of Time
The story behind the story
This historical fiction novel, set in Philadelphia in 1777, is based on my own ancestor, Mary Newport, who owned her own pastry shop and trained girls to bake and run a business.
Mary Newport’s Legacy
Novel
Middle Grade novel manuscript with cover mock-up
Concept:
A time-traveling prankster must foil a plot to end the American Revolution and save her pacifist ancestor before both she and the future of a new nation cease to exist
Sneak Peek:
Twelve-year-old Hannah would rather pull pranks and bake wild desserts than play along with her family’s boring historical reenactment. But when a mysterious message in an old recipe book appears — written in her own handwriting— she’s flung back to Revolutionary-era Philadelphia just in time for the city’s first Independence Day.
Mistaken for a long-lost niece, Hannah becomes an apprentice in her ancestor’s pastry shop, where she’s drawn into a dangerous plot to drug and kidnap Congress and stop the American Revolution before it begins. Her future-great-grandmother, 12-year-old Lydia is suspicious and not exactly thrilled to team up. Worse, Lydia wants things to stay as they are under the king's protection.
With a baking deadline, secret messages, a grumpy privateer, and a young soldier at her side, Hannah has to save Lydia, re-bake dessert for Congress, and figure out how to stop a war-ending disaster — all while learning to trust herself, her voice, and the knowledge that political conflicts are not black and white.
Can two girls save the future of a country?
