Meet "Nick Christopher: Time Traveler" by Gregory Shafer

Nick Christopher: Time Traveler

What does a young scientist do when his mother dies, leaving him alone, devastated, and wondering about this responsibility as an only child? For Dr. Nick Christopher, the answer is easy.

He must go back in time to save her, and, in the process, uncover the questions he has always had about the sudden, and rather mysterious, death of his father, a broken Vietnam War veteran whose life’s dreams have been shattered. 

With help from his lifelong friend, Paul Roberts, a renowned scientist, Nick travels back in time to the years before his birth, so he can talk to his mother and change her future. 

He (Nick's father) had died suddenly before Nick was born, but the trauma of his death had done little to cool his mother's feelings and sometimes bitter resentment about him as a husband.

Although Nick’s mission is to change the course of his family, the scientist is eventually recruited to change major events in American history.

But just as Nick discovers a way to go back in time, so do forces who have their own dark agenda for changing the past to fit their image of the future. So, what happens when Nick runs into these mysterious, unidentified agents? 

Nick Christopher: Time Traveler is the first fiction novel by Dr. Gregory Shafer, an English professor whose nonfiction textbooks include Process & Voice in the Writing Workshop, and Propaganda—American Style: A Textbook for Critical Thinkers (Click on the titles to read our blog posts each book).

Shafer, a Michigan resident, places Nick Christopher in certain tragic events that Michigan and Detroit natives fondly—and sadly—recall, including a much-publicized murder investigation in which Nick becomes a suspect.  

Most importantly, when the Time Traveler discovers the truth about his parents, Nick must decide what to do. Should he protect his mother or save his father? 

Having ventured into the past, he was now confronted with God-like questions of life and death, of whom to save and whom to kill.

Nick also faces the question of whether he can actually do anything to change the past, particularly in light of the dark agents he encounters who want to “control not only what happens but what needs to happen.”

In Nick Christopher: Time Traveler, Shafer cleverly interweaves a fictional story with events that are permanently etched in U.S. history. The suggested motives and conspiracies behind these historical events might prompt readers to take another look at the past from a different perspective. 

The thought-provoking Nick Christopher: Time Traveler will satisfy time travel fans as well as history buffs. 

Click here to preview or purchase the book on MANA's website.