The Palmer Pool - AnnaWestley - Wattpad

The Palmer Pool

Reads 86,448
Votes 8,570
Parts 36
Time 7h 29m

Wattys winner

Reads 86,448
Votes 8,570
Parts 36
Time 7h 29m

Wattys winner

1950s fiction historical historicalfiction lake memory michigan midwest nautical nostalgia paranormal retro river smalltowns summer summerlove teenfiction texttospeech timetravel wattys2021 wattys2022 ya youngadult

[Wattys 2022 Winner!] Vanessa Brooks, an anxious and cynical seventeen year-old, discovers she can travel to the summer of 1953 through the run-down community pool in her rural Michigan town and risks her future as she falls for a boy who lives in the past.

******

On the last day of junior year, Vanessa Brooks joins her friends for a traditional jump into the city pool to celebrate the beginning of summer and the last year they plan to spend in Palmer, Michigan; a dead-end riverside town with an eerily abandoned historic main street and decaying Victorian mansions.  

But when she resurfaces her classmates have been replaced by girls in retro swimsuits and bathing caps and guys in thigh-baring briefs with cigarettes tucked behind their ears.  When Pete Harrison, an unfamiliar face who seems somewhat familiar with hers, offers a dizzy and confused Vanessa a towel and a ride home, she discovers her house and family missing.  She has somehow slipped into 1953, the year her grandparents graduated high school.

Using the pool and vivid imaginings of her grandfather's memories, Vanessa continues to escape to 1953- and to Pete, who, despite his unaffected kindness and optimism, has a mysterious bad reputation around town. But as she dives deeper into the summer her grandparents fell in love, she finds herself unable to return to the present without venturing even further into the past to correct a mistake that threatens her family and future.

*Content Warning: this story contains scenes of near drowning and other perils on the sea, swearing, smoking and alcohol use*

This story is complete at ~90,000 words.

Wattys Winner 2022- Catchiest Hook and Wild Card
Shortlisted Wattys 2021
Featured on @WattpadTimeTravel
Featured on @WattpadHistoricalRomance
Featured on @TeenFiction
Editor's choice list, December 2022, May 2023

Cover by @eva3382All Rights Reserved

1950s fiction historical historicalfiction lake memory michigan midwest nautical nostalgia paranormal retro river smalltowns summer summerlove teenfiction texttospeech timetravel wattys2021 wattys2022 ya youngadult

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The Rockmore House by AnnaWestley

*A sequel to The Palmer Pool* Vanessa Brooks, now a high-school senior, hopes to put her time-traveling days behind her, until an opportunity arises to return the favor of a fellow time-traveler stuck in the past. ****** As Vanessa Brooks begins her senior year of high school, she hopes that the routine of life as usual will distract her from her memories of Pete, the boy she fell for and left behind in 1953. Now painfully aware of the risks of traveling to the past, she considers her time-traveling days over, even though she still longs to reunite with Pete. But with Eric Anderson, the only person who knows the truth about where Vanessa disappeared to all summer, keeping an uncomfortably close watch on her, along with her suspicious family and friends, she knows the only place she'll ever see Pete again is in her vivid dreams. When Vanessa accidentally travels from a 1920s themed Halloween party at a local historic mansion to an eerily similar party in the actual 1920s, she reconnects with a fellow time-traveler who needs her help. Vanessa discovers her ability to affect time is even stronger than she thought, and so is her determination to fight for what- and who- she wants. Cover by @JELyrica Content Warning: this story contains alcohol and drug use, and references to near-drowning events, panic attacks and drug overdose.

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The Rockmore House

A sequel to The Palmer Pool Vanessa Brooks, now a high-school senior, hopes to put her time-traveling days behind her, until an opportunity arises to return the favor of a fellow time-traveler stuck in the past. ****** As Vanessa Brooks begins her senior year of high school, she hopes that the routine of life as usual will distract her from her memories of Pete, the boy she fell for and left behind in 1953. Now painfully aware of the risks of traveling to the past, she considers her time-traveling days over, even though she still longs to reunite with Pete. But with Eric Anderson, the only person who knows the truth about where Vanessa disappeared to all summer, keeping an uncomfortably close watch on her, along with her suspicious family and friends, she knows the only place she'll ever see Pete again is in her vivid dreams. When Vanessa accidentally travels from a 1920s themed Halloween party at a local historic mansion to an eerily similar party in the actual 1920s, she reconnects with a fellow time-traveler who needs her help. Vanessa discovers her ability to affect time is even stronger than she thought, and so is her determination to fight for what- and who- she wants. Cover by @JELyrica Content Warning: this story contains alcohol and drug use, and references to near-drowning events, panic attacks and drug overdose.