***SPOILER ALERT!!!***

If you’ve stumbled onto this page without having read the series The Time Travel Journals of Sahara Aldridge, please be aware that what follows is a complete scene list of the book, with all events summarized. 

For those who’ve arrived here from the end of A Time to Love, welcome!

If you’re perhaps still putting together all the pieces, I hope you enjoy this summary, with all the flashback scenes placed in chronological order as they occurred!

——————————————

Backstory Events happening before chapter 1 of A Time To Seek, as they occurred:

 Spring 1969

Giada, Renae, and Alexander meet for the first time in 44 BC at the assassination of Julius Caesar, realize they are all time travelers, and form a friendship.

Fall 1969

Giada, Renae, and Alexander are again traveling through time together, this time visiting 1155 BC, where they stumble into the “Harem Conspiracy” of Ramesses III, and barely escape. When they return to their own time, they accidentally discover that Alex is a Revisionist, able to change the past. He has buried a necklace for Giada as a joke, but it’s still there, and she makes her first astounding “find,” getting a taste for what it’s like, and beginning her lifelong obsession with stealing from the past.

December 23, 1974

Giada is a few years out of college, and already has made herself rich by using Colin, a Revisionist she met, to help her make “finds” that grow her wealth. An old man visits, Ahmed Abd el-Rassul, who has guessed that Giada must be a Revisionist. He pressures her to help with a plan he has concocted to make himself rich. His grandfather was one of the men who supposedly stumbled on a rich cache of burial goods in the 1800s, and grew wealthy from their illegal sale. But el-Rassul tells Giada his grandfather was actually a time-traveler, who witnessed the cache being buried, came back to his own time and “found” it all. Now, the family money has run out, and el-Rassul wants Giada to go back and help his father and his younger self find the tomb of Tutankhamun before Howard Carter discovers it. He threatens to expose Giada, and he kills Colin. He still insists she find another Revisionist to complete his plan. Giada only knows one other Revisionist, Alexander.

December 27, 1974

Giada approaches Alexander and Renae with her request, that they help her change history by diverting Howard Carter away from the tomb of Tutankhamun and give information to el-Rassul’s father and younger self, to help them find and exploit the tomb themselves. She begs for help, telling Alex she fears for her own safety. Alexander and Renae are horrified at her request to change history in such a self-serving way, and when Giada implies that Sahara might be in danger if they don’t, they throw her out.

December 29, 1974

Two days later, Renae and Alexander are trying to find a way to stay safe from Giada’s threats, when an intruder enters their home and sets a bomb. The three escape with nothing more than the briefcase Giada gave them, with everything they would need to make a start in life in 1894. Though they will never help Giada with her plan, they decide she won’t to look for them there, and decide to escape back to 1894, indefinitely. They remember meeting a fellow time traveler when they were in college, back in 1155 BC, who warned them that if Giada betrayed them, they should run.

December 30, 1974

Giada learns that the Aldridges have died in a house fire due to an explosive device. Alex’s body has been found, but the fire was so intense they haven’t found Renae or Sahara. She is devastated and furious at el-Rassul, who shows up and explains he couldn’t let anyone know about his plan. She tells him she won’t help him, but he has decided to try visiting his younger self to make it happen, something the Tempus Vigilia Society says is impossible or will kill him.

Eleven years later…

August 1905 / April 1985

Renae, Alexander and Sahara have now lived eleven years in the past since arriving in 1894, establishing themselves as scholars. They visit the Temple of Hatshepsut in 1458 BC and run into Joanne, a colleague of Giada Moretti’s. They are terrified Joanne will tell Giada they are hiding in 1905. They decide they must find a way to stop Giada.

April 1985

Eleven years have passed since Giada believed herself responsible for the Aldridges’ deaths. She has continued to fund her foundation through the “finds” left behind by Colin, but the money is running out. Fifteen-year-old Jack now lives with her. Giada has determined to find another Revisionist, to actually carry out el-Rassul’s original plan, since it appears he failed. She wants to divert Howard Carter from finding Tut’s tomb and give information to her own grandmother, to help her family be the one to find and loot the tomb. Her time-traveling assistant, Joanne, returns from a trip to Hatshepsut, and Giada is shocked to learn Joanne ran into the Aldridges there. She figures out they must not have died in the fire, and must have escaped back to 1894 and been living there.

June 8, 1905 (1985 for Giada)

Renae and Alexander have returned from their trip back to Hatshepsut’s time, where they encountered Joanne, and are now at Highclere with fifteen-year-old Sahara, preparing to go to Venice, to try to stop Belzoni from discovering Seti’s tomb. They hope the undiscovered tomb will prevent their earlier college-trip, in which Giada learned that Alex is a Revisionist. If they can change the past, they can return with Sahara to 1985 and the second child they’re expecting will grow up in the late 20th century where he or she belongs.

August 1905 (1985 for Giada)

Sahara is fifteen years old and her parents have just left for a trip to Venice. A stranger visits, Giada Moretti, asking questions about them. Sahara tells her they are visiting a “strongman” – not knowing what that really means, but it seems significant to Giada, and Sahara worries she has done something wrong.

August 1905 (1985 for Giada)

Renae and Alexander visit “The Great Belzoni” in 1814 Venice, Italy, before he leaves for Egypt and begins discovering tombs, including the tomb of Seti. They attempt to divert him from going to Egypt. Giada Moretti shows up, threatening them and threatening Sahara, whom she says she has just met at Highclere. Renae and Alex flee, but Renae goes into labor. Just before the baby arrives, they jump farther back in time, to 1720.

October 21, 1914

After college, Sahara arrives in Egypt for the first time, and during a visit to “Belzoni’s Tomb” – the tomb of Seti I discovered by the circus strongman Giovanni Belzoni, she has what she assumes was a hallucination as it appears she travels back in time to Seti’s funeral in ancient Egypt.

October 28, 1914

World War I interrupts Sahara’s career, and she must return from Egypt to London and Highclere, where she helps as a nurse in the house-turned-hospital.

July 1915

Sahara helps tend wounded WWI soldiers at Highclere, which has been turned into a makeshift hospital. A solider she is falling in love with, Oliver, dies unexpectedly.

1737

It is now 1737 for Renae and Alexander, who have been stranded in the 18th century because Persia was born in 1720 and they can’t travel forward without leaving her. They visit Tutankhamun’s 1325 BC, and place something in the tomb with hopes that Sahara will find it when the tomb is opened three thousand years later.

November 2, 2002

Giada has spent the years since 1985 fruitlessly searching for another Revisionist, but now that it’s 2002, she can send someone back 80 years to 1922 to learn the whereabouts of the Aldridges. She is very ill, and hopes the changes to her history will undo her illness. Giada and Jack travel to the Valley of the Kings, where Giada has arranged a trip back in time for him, to the discovery of Tut’s tomb, to meet Sahara, whom Giada has told him about. He knows nothing of her unethical activities, nor why she wants him to meet Sahara and get information about the Aldridges. She expects Jack to return immediately, but he disappears, which can only mean that he remained in the past, by choice, or because he was killed. She is heartbroken. 

Events beginning at the start of A Time to Seek:

February 8, 1922

Sahara’s work on the dig site in the Valley of the Kings begins again for the season. The man funding the dig, Lord Carnarvon, arrives with his wife, the Countess Almina, and their daughter, Lady Evelyn, who is a young friend of Sahara’s. Evelyn brings a page torn from Sahara’s mother’s journal, which she has just found in a desk in her home at Highclere Castle, where Sahara and her parents often stayed before they died when she was fifteen years old. The journal page hints to Sahara that her mother was pregnant when she died, but also that her parents might be able to travel through time. The page suggests they planned to travel back to the 1800s, to visit “The Great Belzoni” who discovered the tomb of Seti I.

February 9, 1922

Sahara returns to the tomb of Seti I, where she had the strange hallucination eight years earlier, to see if she can recreate it, traveling through time herself. She fails. 

April 1922

The season ends with nothing found, and she returns to Highclere Castle for the summer.

July 1922

At Highclere, Sahara finds a letter written between her parents, again implying they could travel in time, but also hinting it is impossible to visit the same time in the past twice. She wonders if this was the problem when she tried to recreate her “hallucination” in the Seti tomb, and determines to try time travel again when she returns to Egypt, in a different location.

November 4, 1922

The team begins digging in the Valley again and within a week a step is found, indicating the likely presence of a tomb or at least a cache of buried goods. The reporter, Jack Moretti, shows up asking questions.

November 5, 1922

The team discovers a sealed tomb door. Jack returns and asks Sahara to meet him that night. They have dinner together, during which Sahara learns he is the nephew of Giada Moretti, the woman she met at age fifteen, and has always suspected was involved in her parents’ death. Sahara determines to avoid Jack and focus on testing her time travel theory at the Temple of Hatshepsut.

November 6, 1922

Sahara attempts time travel again at the Temple of Hatshepsut, this time successfully. When she returns, Jack is waiting for her, and asks her to meet him again. Despite her desire to avoid him, she agrees, to ask more questions about his aunt. At dinner, however, she doesn’t learn much except that she is very attracted to Jack. That night, she realizes she might be able to intersect her parents somewhere in the past before they died. But she wants to practice first. So she’ll use the newly-found tomb to travel back in time, knowing her parents can’t be there, since it hadn’t been discovered yet when they died.

November 6-11, 1922

Sahara successfully arrives in 1325 BC Egypt, and falls into the palace intrigue. Tutankhamun has been dead more than two months, and the embalming process nearly complete. His young widow, Ankhe-sen-amun (Senamun) is being pressured to marry the vizier, Ay, who wants to claim the throne.

Sahara encounters a man who seems to be Jack’s double, and eventually figures out it is Jack, who is also a time traveler. Sahara discovers her parents have actually been here, and she and Jack spend several days trying to help Senamun and gain information about her parents. She learns they left Egypt, probably for Venice, and that they traveled with a daughter, a girl about 20 years old. Sahara finds a message written by her father to the girl she realizes must be her sister, Persia.

This knowledge changes everything, as it proves her parents must not have died, and are still alive somewhere, traveling through time with her 17-year-old sister. 

Sahara begins to learn the rules of time travel from Jack, including the fact that nothing she does in the past will change history. Despite this, she helps Senamun, and she and Jack escape Vizier Ay’s attempt to have them executed.

Sahara and Jack return to 1922. Sahara expects Jack to return about an hour after she did, since that’s when he left 1922, but falls asleep waiting. When she awakens, she learns she’s been gone for five days. 

November 11, 1922

Back in 1922, Jack and Sahara find each other and Jack explains that while most time travelers are only “Observers” and cannot change the past, a very special few are “Revisionists,” who return to the time they left, with their time in the past intact and changes made to history. Sahara must be a Revisionist, since she arrived back in 1922 after being gone five days, the exact time she was in the past. Sahara is terrified by this ability to wreak havoc on the past.

November 26, 1922

The tomb is officially opened for the first time. Sahara is treated as an outsider, and not able to enter yet.

November 27, 1922

Eve comes to Sahara late at night, and tells Sahara she, Howard Carter, and her father have snuck into the tomb. She has swiped a coin she thought Sahara might like, remembering Sahara’s father’s coin collection. Sahara is shocked to realize a coin not yet minted when the tomb was sealed inside the tomb. Eve also mentions a coded letter there, which Sahara thinks might be a message to her from her father.

November 28, 1922

Sahara gets into the tomb and finds the message from her father, instructing her to meet her family in ancient Rome and warning her not to trust Giada Moretti.

November 28, 1922

Sahara tells Jack that rather than go to ancient Rome, she’ll go to Venice in the 1800s, to try to stop them from ever disappearing in the first place. Jack warns her this will change her own past, and be dangerous to her mental health.

Sahara charts her travels through time, and realizes she seems to have defied a rule, and been to two different times within less than eighty years of each other. If she is able to do this, her easiest path to saving her parents would be to travel back only 17 years to 1905, just before they left for Venice, and stop them. But first, she wants to test whether she can time travel to within 80 years of another trip.

She and Jack go to the Seti tomb to test it out, but she isn’t able to do it.

November 29, 1922

After getting locked in the Seti tomb for the night and then returning to the dig site, Sahara overhears a red-haired man arguing with Jack about his aunt tracking her family. She decides she must go to ancient Rome to meet up with them.

December 5, 1922

Reporters are beginning to flock to the Valley, and Lord Carnarvon wants Sahara to return to England with him for her own safety. Instead, Sahara is determined to go to ancient Rome, and Jack insists he’s coming with her.

December 7, 1922

Sahara lets Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter believe she’s leaving, so she and Jack can join them traveling north to Cairo, and then to Alexandria. But then she and Jack separate from them and continue to Rome.

December 11, 1922

Jack and Sahara make their way to the Roman Forum, where they travel back in time to 68 AD, to the day of Nero’s death, where they are supposed to meet her parents at sunset, at Nero’s statue in front of his palace. They are again pulled into political intrigue, believed to be spies for Nero, and must fight their way free to reach the statue in time.

December 11, 1922

Meanwhile, Renae, Alexander, and Persia are also in Rome, 68 AD, having traveled there from the time they now live in, 1737, trying to intersect Sahara. Sahara arrives at Nero’s palace only seconds before her parents and sister escape back to 1737, but it’s long enough to spot them, and to realize that her sister is able to stop time.

December 11, 1922

Returning to 1922, Sahara and Jack again encounter the red-haired man, Reuben, an employee of Giada’s. He tells them of Giada’s life of ill-gotten gains through Revisionists, which explains why she is hunting for Sahara and her family. Jack confesses to Sahara that he is actually time traveling to visit her, and his real time is 2002.

December 11, 1922

Sahara is furious about Jack’s deception, and realizes they cannot be together without Jack being stranded in the past. Now that she knows her parents are alive she determines again to go to Venice, to try to find evidence of when they lived there in the 1800s, so she can intercept them, despite the danger to her sanity that will happen if she changes her own past. Jack insists on traveling to Venice with her.

December 12, 1922

Sahara and Jack search in Venice, looking for traces of her family in the 1800s, so she can go back to that time and prevent their getting stranded in the past. They find nothing in the archives, but a memory of Jack’s helps them realize that Giada got her start in her looting when she traveled to the time of Ramesses III and his “Harem Conspiracy.” They figure that if they can intercept her there, and stop her from gaining the knowledge she must have used to make her original “find” in college, they may be able to change the course of her life, and thus save Sahara’s parents from being chased back in time by her.

December 19, 1922

Back in 1922, Jack and Sahara make plans to travel to 1155 BC, to the Harem Conspiracy, to stop Giada and change both their family’s histories, despite the danger to their minds.

December 21, 1922

Jack and Sahara travel to 1155 BC’s Harem Conspiracy and find their way into the action looking for Giada. Sahara is shocked when she finds Giada accompanied by her mother, Renae. The two are in their early twenties, younger than Sahara, as for them this trip to the Harem Conspiracy is in 1969, before Sahara is even born.

December 21, 1922

Sahara does not reveal her identity to them, but warns her father that Giada will one day betray them, and if they are in danger, they should run, but leave no one behind. She hopes to at least change her own history, so that her parents take her with them when they go to Venice, thereby preventing them all from getting separated. Jack and Sahara return to 1922, but no memories have changed, so they apparently failed to stop Giada. They put it together that her parents must have been friends with Giada in the 1960s, meaning they have spent most or all of Sahara’s life in their own past. She wonders if she was actually born in the 1970s, rather than the 1890s.

September 18, 1737

Renae, Alexander, and Persia have escaped from Decima in the corridor of Nero’s palace in Rome, after hearing Sahara’s been executed. But Persia tells her parents that she stopped time for a moment, just before they escaped, and saw a woman she is certain was Sahara. She also insists on testing whether she is now able to time travel alone, and her parents nervously allow her to try in the Sistine Chapel. She successfully gets to 1512 and back, and now insists her parents return to 1922 without her, to reunite with Sahara. Before she convinces them, however, Renae remembers the girl they met at the Harem Conspiracy, who warned them about Giada, and realizes it must have been Sahara. They remember establishing the location of an emergency meeting spot at her suggestion, and are suddenly hopeful that if it was Sahara, maybe she will go to the pyramids on the day of Khufu’s death, and they can meet her there.

December 21-22, 1922

Sahara is at first heartbroken to have seen her parents at the Harem Conspiracy, but not figured out how to meet them in their present time. But she then remembers their conversation about choosing a place to meet, should they ever get separated. It’s a chance to meet them again, if they ever used the pyramid meeting place in the thirty-plus years after they met Sahara at the Harem Conspiracy. She and Jack head to Cairo and the pyramids.

December 23, 1922

Jack and Sahara arrive at the pyramids, travel back to the day of Khufu’s death in 2566 BC, and are immediately suspected as being demons by the workers who see them materialize. They also meet the engineer of the project, who seems to assume they are monotheists, rather than demons. (For those who’ve read Pyramid of Secrets, you’ll remember Hemi!)

Before Hemi can get them away, Sahara sees others emerging from the pyramid and realizes she has at last been reunited with her parents and sister.

December 23, 1922

The four Aldridges and Jack are whisked away to Hemi’s house, to avoid those who want to kill them as demons. They spend the day and through the night catching up on everything, figuring out all that’s happened with Giada and their trips through time searching for each other.

December 24, 1922

With Khufu dead, others come with accusations about the time travelers. Jack insists the rest of them are his unwilling slaves, and convinces the Egyptians to take only him. The Aldridges make a desperate and hasty plan to rescue him from the burial chamber high in the pyramid. They bring him down, but he’s been drugged, so cannot time travel to escape. But then in a moment of panic, Sahara grabs him and returns to 1922, shocking both of them with her apparent ability to not only bring objects, but also people, back with her if they’re unconscious.

December 24, 1922

Jack and Sahara return to the Cairo hotel, where they run into the gossipy Helen Winlock, and Jack tells her they have gotten married. When Helen leaves, he makes the marriage proposal official, convincing Sahara to put aside her fears and follow her heart. She agrees, and the two are married in Cairo.

December 25, 1922

Sahara and Jack decide to immediately rejoin her family in 1737 Venice as they had planned, and travel from Cairo to Venice, then time travel back to 1737.

November 1737

Sahara and Jack have been in 1737 Venice with her family for over a month and know it’s time to return to 1922. They had been planning to return without Sahara “revising” and retaining the time she’s been gone, but she now suspects she’s pregnant and can’t take any chances on undoing that, so she must return with her time passed. She is worried because it means she will be separated from Jack while he waits for her to return.

November 1737

They all agree to have their next reunion in the Venice of 1637, at the opera house. They also agree to wait one year, so the baby will be born and can travel with them. Sahara’s parents would like to see her return to her native time, now 2003, but she’s unwilling since they were told by Giada’s lackey Reuben that Jack did not return to 2002. She and Jack decide to test her ability to bring him through time with her, with the thought that perhaps she could bring him to 2003 with her, explaining the reason he didn’t return instantly to 2002 when he left.

February 8, 1923

Sahara successfully brings the sleeping Jack back with her to their time passed, but they immediately encounter Reuben, whom Jack gives an angry message to pass to Giada. They then head for the train station to return to the Valley of the Kings.

December 25, 2002

Back in 2002, it’s been more than six weeks since Jack disappeared, and Giada has gotten bad news from her doctor and weakened significantly. She sends Reuben to track Jack and figure out why he didn’t return, but Reuben comes back two days later with Jack’s angry message. Jack knows everything unethical she’s done and is never returning to her. She is distraught, and desperate. She concocts a plan to send her assistants, Joanne and Fiona, to Venice where she knows they’ll find Sahara, and drag Sahara back to the 21st century, so Giada can convince her to change history and save them all, even knowing it will erase Jack and Sahara’s relationship if the past is changed.

February 8, 1923

Sahara and Jack are headed back to Egypt from Venice, but encounter Joanne and Fiona, who first try to convince Sahara to come with them willingly. Jack announces their expected baby, which convinces the two not to force Sahara to return against her will, which could undo the pregnancy. Jack hears that Giada’s illness is terminal, and tells the two women to say whatever they want to Giada to make her feel better about betraying Jack. But then Sahara thinks of an idea, to possibly achieve reconciliation. She asks Joanne and Fiona to bring Giada to meet them at the opera house in Venice of 1637.

February 1637

Everyone convenes in 1637 Venice, and Giada is reconciled to Jack and the Aldridges. She dies that night and is buried in Venice. Renae and Alexander convince Sahara to return to 2003, taking Jack with her as a “passenger,” to have her baby in the correct century. But first, she and Jack will return to the dig site, to say their goodbyes to everyone, including Lord Carnarvon, whom Sahara now knows will soon die.

February 16-May 3, 1923

Sahara is present for the official opening of Tut’s burial chamber, stays through the death of Lord Carnarvon and travels to England for his burial. She and Jack then go to Oxford University, where her parents first brought her back in time to 1894, almost 28 years earlier. Jack takes a sleeping drug, and once he’s asleep, she travels back to 2003 with him as a passenger. When she arrives, however, he is not there.

Spring 2003

Sahara waits for several days at Oxford, hoping Jack will show up. Eventually, she visits the graves of Evelyn and Howard Carter to say goodbye, then travels to Highclere. When she arrives at the estate, Jack is there. She learns that she did successfully bring him to 2003, except he awoke in Egypt, where he first left 2003, and has been fighting to get back to her for days.

September 2021

Eighteen years later, Sahara finishes her journals as a gift for her daughter’s 18th birthday, and we learn of their life in the 21st century.

 

So, that’s the story! I hope you loved it! 

If you’re looking for something to read next, here are two suggestions: