Thirteen Times Three: Book One of the Rosemary Ridge Trilogy (Volume 1)

Life at Rosemary Ridge, an herb farm on Wilkes Island just a ferry ride away from Seattle, is simply beautiful. Liza Cantrell has her piano and her inspiring music lessons with Mr. Christofides, her lifelong buddies Holly Greer and Megan Allen, her cat Houdini, and even a tree house for daydreaming, built by a wonderful neighbor, architect David Rolfe. Liza treasures relationships with her grandfather James Starbuck, a retired physician, as well as with her scatter-brained Aunt Sybil and the family's longtime helper, Alma Henderson. Her firebrand younger brother Peter also pitches in with Liza on the work of their family farm, from caring for the goats, rabbits and chickens to tending the herbs, flowers and vegetables in the raised beds behind the deer fences. Then Liza starts eighth grade and hears newcomer Rebecca Stirling laugh like a crow. Soon many things Liza has been sure about—her friendships, her music, and especially her widowed mother, Beth—become called into question. Liza writes about it all in the diary Beth gave her on the night she turned thirteen, but she has a little problem there, too. The shabby leather cover of the journal encloses a centuries-old family secret Liza will have to live with one day at a time for the coming year. As Liza relates her own story, she also follows those of her mother and her grandmother, Betsy, at exactly the same age. She comes to realize that firstborn daughters in her family share far more than just green eyes and some form of the name Elizabeth! After "Thirteen Times Three," the first book of the Rosemary Ridge Trilogy, the second book, "Duel or Duet," puts Liza in an uneasy onstage partnership with violinist Rebecca Stirling, while Beth struggles to resist the love of David Rolfe. Book Three, "Liza, Elizabeth" brings change to many on Wilkes Island, and presents Liza with a choice her mother and grandmother never had as teens--whether or not to make the island home for the high school years to come. The books of the Rosemary Ridge Trilogy, with its main action set in about 1990, have been released concurrently in 2013. They are the first of a planned series of twelve short novels for multi-generational readers to be set in several Pacific Northwest locales between 1955 and 2005. A number of characters met on Wilkes Island will reappear at different ages and stages of their lives in that time frame, with mysteries of love, identity and relationship emerging and resolving in each. Together, the stories of Roundabout Books will give modern kids, their parents and other adults a chance to consider how everyday life changed over the span of that half century--and to talk about challenges that are timeless aspects of growing up.