Growing Up Again

Janie Lawson tells her husband that she’s leaving, and by the morning she has indeed gone: it’s 1981, she’s fifteen, in her parents’ house, with a bad perm and double physics at nine.

Who wouldn’t love the chance to visit for a day, see old friends and gather more memories?

But when the days turn into weeks and the weeks into months, Janie must ask herself the big questions: What is it for? Is she there to have another run at life and get it right this time? To prevent the disasters she knows are coming? And why, if she had to go back, could she not have gone a bit further and arrived in time to save Elvis? In 1981 (with The King past saving), it could be Tiananmen Square, or Chernobyl, even 9/11, and while she’s at it there’s the upcoming fairytale wedding of Lady Diana Spencer to Prince (it seemed at the time) Charming. Stopping that is easier than you’d think, but closer to home things are not going well. Her father has lost his job, her mother is pregnant, her best friend is an orphan and it’s all Janie’s fault. She only wants to help but the more she tries the worse it gets and soon it seems there’s no one she hasn’t offended, humiliated, defrauded, addicted, evicted, or killed. Elvis, possibly, is well out of it.