THE OTHER VALLEY by Scott Alexander Howard

I love time-travel novels with their tricky handling of interference with the past.  In this one, the author has conjured up a unique world--a series of identical valleys with a twenty-year time difference between each one.  The valley to the west is twenty years in the past, and the valley to the east is twenty years in the future.  The boundaries are manned by a gendarmerie who ensure that no one crosses into an adjacent valley without an assigned escort and permission from the Conseil of both the visitor’s home valley and destination valley.  Denied petitions require vigilance, as those petitioners may attempt to cross anyway.  We meet Odile, the first-person narrator, when she is sixteen years old.  She becomes friends with Edme, a violin prodigy, and then recognizes his parents visiting from the future, despite the black masks that are meant to disguise them.  This visit can only mean that Edme’s parents want another glimpse of him while he is still alive and that Edme’s death is imminent.  The tacit rule against sharing that information with his family in the present sets the course for Odile’s future, as she is riddled with guilt and keeps tripping up in her efforts to improve her lot in life.  There is not a lot of border crossing in this novel, but the concept certainly dominates the plot.  The author manages what time travel does take place with an eye for the intricacies and pitfalls that accompany such scenarios as people running into their past or future selves.  Thank you to Book Club Favorites at Simon & Schuster for the free copy for review.