Valley of the Moon by Melanie Gideon

Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale Date: July 26th 2016
Pages: 394

Greengage, California 1906: Joseph Bell is the keeper of a farm, which over the years has grown into a large community of people.  They live happily there, until the big San Francisco earthquake of 1906 happens. The community is overshadowd by a toxic fog. No one can go out or they will not make it out alive. They are not sure when help is coming their way or if there ever will be help. 

San Francisco, 1975. Lux is a single mother living with her son Benno in an apartment. She is a waitress and is in for some vacation time. Her best friend Rhonda advices her to go on a retreat in the woods, while Lux''s grandparents will take care of Benno. Later that week she is camping in the woods and going for a little walk, and walks to what she sees as a fog. She sees some light in the distance, and when she walks closer, she sees a building with people inside. When she gets closer and looks inside, she sees people in old fashioned clothing. She decides to enter the building..and steps right into the world of Joseph Bell and his community who are stuck in 1906! At firsthand is wondering why they are there in those Little House on the Prairie clothes, are they shooting a movie, do they have a theme party? Joseph explains to her that they can't go past the fog. 
It seems that the community has been stuck there for 17 years, waiting for help or for the fog to vanish. The strange thing is: only Lux is able to go through it back and forth. And so she informs Joseph and the community about her world in 1975, and how that world is in her time period.

Back home, Benno and her inner circle are growing more curious about where she is traveling to all the time, and when she finally tells them the truth, they found it hard to believe, this change a little when she takes Benno with her in the end.  The strange thing is, that in 1975 no historic record can be found of Greengage, like it never existed. Every day she is more strongly drawn in by the sweet simplicity of life in Greengage, and by the irresistible connection she feels with a man born decades before her. Soon she finds herself torn between her ties to the modern world, her adored son and the first place she has ever felt truly at home..

I had this book on my ereader for quite a while, and recently I finally had the time to start reading it. From the beginning the author has made it a highly entertaining and gripping story that you just can't put down. It was so crazy that Joseph was stuck in 1906 and Lux could walk into that time period.Like some sort of backward science fiction.
I was a little dissapointed with the ending, but further on, without giving too much spoilers away, this book that travels back and forth in time is one not to miss!