The Connecticut Baby (Nappy Version)

Book excerpt: Delilah Perkins has a family secret that is about to be discovered. At 109 years of age and nearing the end of her time, Delilah’s descendants number in the dozens. She lives in a home surrounded by photos of her memories spanning over a century. 21-year-old Zachary Perkins, one of Delilah's forty great-grandchildren, is just starting his life, only months away from his college graduation. While paying a final visit to the family matriarch, Zachary uncovers an old photograph that reveals Delilah's secret - a long-lost child, unknown to anyone in the Perkins family. What happens next is simply beyond Zachary's comprehension. He is transported back to Delilah's past where he experiences her family secret in the first person, incredibly as the very child same in the photograph. It is the Summer of 1922. The United States is crawling out of its post-war (World War I) recession. The 1920s are at last beginning to roar. Zachary discovers not only Delilah's long-lost child, but the long-lost life of a woman heretofore unknown to the Perkins family. He uncovers a lifetime buried on the distant side of a World War and the Great Depression; the lifetime of the beautiful and free-spirited Delilah Hayes at just 21 years, his own age in the present time. Over the course of the Summer, Zachary becomes more and more attached to Delilah's past. He falls in love with the coastal town of New Orchard, Connecticut, where Delilah got her start; along with the quirky people who inhabit his young great grandmother's life. Zachary begins to feel that Delilah’s past, in fact, belongs to himself; that this is the life he was supposed to live. Zachary questions whether he is even in the past at all. He asks the question: would it be possible to abandon his future to remain in the year 1922? If he makes that fateful decision, what will become of the future Zachary Perkins living in the year 2010? More immediately, if he stays, what will become of the two-year-old boy who was Delilah's first child?