The Prodigal Hour: A Time Travel Novel

The Prodigal Hour: A Time Travel Novel by Will Entrekin

On October 31, 2001, six weeks after escaping the World Trade Center attacks, Chance Sowin moves back home, hoping for familiarity and security. Instead, he interrupts a burglary as his father, Dennis, is shot and killed.

What begins as a homicide investigation escalates when the Joint Terrorism Task Force arrrives. Where he hoped for solutions, Chance finds only more questions: who killed his father, and why? Was his father—a physicist at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study—working on dangerous research? Why did Dennis build a secret laboratory in his basement?

Chance might not know the answers, but Cassie Lackesis, Dennis’ research assistant, thinks she does. She isn’t certain that Dennis discovered a way to time travel, but she knows who told her: Chance.

Together with Cassie, Chance will go on a journey across time and space that will challenge his every notion of ideas like “right” and “good.” One young man’s desire to make a difference will become, instead, a race against time as he tries to prevent forces he could never understand from not just destroying the universe but rendering it nonexistent.

When every action has a reaction, every force its counter, Chance will find that the truest measure of his character is not what he wants but what he will do when the prodigal hour returns.

For as long as I discovered the writings of MichaelCrichton, Timeline has been my favorite Time Traveling novel. I have found one that has finally dethroned it. The Prodigal Hour: A Time Travel Novel deals with quantum physics on level that I barely grasp. For the most part I don’t even know if the theoretical science is sound but it’s compelling and logical to my mind.

It followed my logic and understanding of time travel which made it instantly relatable. I like how Entrekin inserted his characters to many significant points in history. I think what happen when Chance and Cassie visited Christ; is my favorite part of this book.

But the crown jewel of this novel is the reactive consequences of temporal manipulation. Everyone has discusses visiting Christ, stopping Hitler and WTC but using alternate realities, colliding and collapsing universes, Will Entrekin crafts a fictional novel, that answers those questions. I think it will become a classic.

Although it ends a little more somber than I would like, I understand and applaud its conclusion. There has to be consequences for partaking in time travelling. Even now as I write this I have smile on my face because it was that interesting.

Having been a fan of time travel since I first saw ‘Back to the Future Trilogy’ as a kid, The Prodigal Hour should be made into a movie; as long as they stay faithful to the book. Timeline, as previous mention, is a perfect example of how Hollywood crapped an excellent novel.

I give The Prodigal Hour: A Time Travel Novel 5 out 5.