Time Pebbles

De: Jerry Merritt

Narrado por: Emily Sutton-Smith

Tekla, son of an ancient shaman, loses Ka Li when she is torn from his life by a brutal tribe of Denisovans in a Late Pleistocene kidnapping.

Ka Li escapes but is unarmed and forced to flee across the Bering land bridge where she becomes hopelessly lost in the endless tracts of North America. Only Tekla cares enough to search for her over the years. As Ka Li survives fierce predators and scarce resources, she leaves behind a series of signal cairns to help Tekla find her.

Skipping forward 60,000 years, Helen Ryland, a mid-20th century archaeologist, unearths one of Ka Li’s surviving signal cairns and realizes she has found trace of people who populated the Americas even before the Clovis culture. Helen’s detective work tracking Ka Li’s timeless signals across the Alaskan wilderness now intertwines with Ka Li’s story. As Helen solves the puzzle of the signal cairns she finds universal fame and suffers devastating misfortune. In the end, Helen discovers that science in isolation cannot answer all of her questions for Tekla’s devotion to Ka Li had not died even though 600 centuries had passed.

©2014 Jerry Merritt (P)2018 Podium Publishing

Elegant parallels

Engaging from start to finish Jerry Merritt does it again. Like his last book there's a point where it seems that two sets of story points have wandered too far afield to ever meet up again and then he does his writerly magic and brings it on home to a satisfying and emotionally compelling conclusion.

Thoroughly enjoyed

A most unusual story involving time. No discussions of time- and yet there are two distinct time flows that eventually connect in unexpected ways. This is surrounded by a really creative and compassionate imagining of humans as we were a long long time ago - like the Pleistocene. Well done and well read.

It's so good! I look forward to more!

Great story, great storytelling and good narration. I listened to this book after enjoying his other book. I think he's a really good author and I hope he has more on the way!

Great book. Loved the story.

This was a wonderful book that took you on an adventure through time. I would recommend this book to anyone that loves archaeology and mystery. The ending was wonderful and I am looking for a sequel hopefully.

What a story !

I enjoy the way that they mixed the 1st nation events and modern examples but the ending was unreal

Wonderful story!

I loved everything about this book. Wonderful story and great characters. I will look for more from this author!

The best book I have ever read! 

I know that everyone has a particular taste in entertainment. But, at 69 years old, this is the first book that truly touched the deepest part of my heart. It had heartbreaking tragedies and the warmth of the human spirit. Since Life does not often give us wonderful endings, at least we can fill our heart’s with happiness of what can be. The ending is truly SHOCKING, completely unexpected. AND, IT HAPPENS ON THE VERY LAST PAGE. I hope this author continues to write stories with wonderful characters and the mysteries of life as he has done here. I will buy every single book he writes.

Superb StoryTelling

Loved the concept and its implementation... Gotta say though, not really SF, more historical fiction adventure, unless you consider anthropology and paleontology SF... The back and forth chronologically is seamlessly done, and uber enjoyed the early scientific advances... Has some serious power and poignancy, and keeps you hooked w/ the interweaved story arcs... However, the narration was pretty bland and detracted a bit... It’s a professional job, but has no feeling... 1.25 too slow and 1.5 a touch too quick... Overall an excellent story, better than average audio book, due to only average performance...

Good read

Interesting story, very timely also with old fossils being found in the news, spring of 2018.

Interesting for the historical anthropology

After thoroughly enjoying A Gift of Time by Jerry Merritt, I was excited to give Time Pebbles a try. I loved the story and the anthropological info in it. The parallel stories weave nicely with each other, although the dialogue between the students felt a bit contrived. (Having been on a few undergrad digs, I never heard conversations like those described in TP.) There are two interesting stories here, but the performance does not convey it. It was all I could do to keep pep-talking myself through listening. Vocally, the reader was unable to tell a story in any sort of compelling way. The stilted, over-enunciated, artificial delivery is reminiscent of an android, or Siri reading a novel. I'm nearly done with the book and I have no idea who these characters are. There are several exciting events in the book, but I have no idea when they're happening based on the reader's delivery. I love reader performances that paint a picture, that make me feel as if I know the main characters. This performance failed to do that.