The Key, The Magic Mirror, and The Topaz Ring

Honored with the 2011 Moonbeam Children's Book Award, this book won the Silver Medal in young adult fiction, historical/cultural. Seventeen-year old Sarah James receives a secret key at her Great Grandmother Rose Chandler's deathbed where she is told to unlock a hidden room. In the mysterious room, she finds an antique mirror with a spell. The mirror pulls her into the past where she relives her grandmother's life as a young pre-Civil War woman, who built a cotton plantation and raised a family with Hugh Chandler. The Chandler family history continues to unfold decades later when Sarah's twin grandchildren, Drew and Sarah, discover the magical mirror which also transports them back in time. They relive the Civil War (or as they call it, the War of Northern Aggression) through the eyes of Paul and Sarah, also twins, learning the secrets of the Chandler Plantation and what life was like when the Yankees invaded their ancestral home. A love story unfolds in the third chapter of this novella, when Dr. Karen Marshall is summoned south by lawyer Stephen McGuire to arrange a funeral in the Chandler family. Karen finds herself under a spell, she's no longer herself, can't understand why she keeps remembering things she couldn't possibly know, with feelings she shouldn't have. Her mysterious connection to the Chandler Plantation and her ownership of a unique topaz ring bring her life into focus.