According to Genesis people lived close to a thousand years with many generations from the time of Adam until several generations after Noah being alive at the same time. It’s easy to take the various events of Genesis as separate stories without recognizing how much the time periods when these events occurred overlapped. Heimerdinger brings alive through solid research the immense magnitude of the structure and brings into focus a creditable theory of why a group of Noah’s descendants believed they could actually reach and conquer heaven. Most people tend to think of the Tower of Babel as a silly little Tower of Pisa sort of thing, devised by people who weren’t too bright if they believed in God on one hand and thought they could climb up to heaven and conquer Him on the other. Their jousts with the prince carry them through a myriad of adventures from Harry’s quick sidetrip into a time period he’s visited before to the top of the incredible tower. Harry and Steffanie Hawkins, brother and sister, go in search of the missing members of their family and end up in the same time period, but quickly become prisoners of Nimrod’s son. If that isn’t enough burden for Mary to shoulder, she and the children rescue the infant, Abram, from Nimrod’s soldiers and must flee to Salem to save themselves and the baby. Added to that responsibility is a terrible sword forged in evil by an evil man in Book of Mormon times, Akish, a particularly evil Jaredite king.
Mary as the only adult feels responsible for the children. Mary (a time traveler from the meridian of time), finds herself stranded in King Nimrod’s day with Rebecca and Joshua, children of Garth and Jenny who have been with the series from the beginning.
They are merely a device he uses in a game of “what if.” In this case, what if people from our time period could drop in on the people and events surrounding the Tower of Babel? Heimerdinger makes no claim that the energy fields he uses to transport his characters through time really exist. The entire Tennis Shoes Adventure Series is based on the writer’s concept of time travel, an interesting device which allows people of one time period to drop in on events past or future. For those who aren’t into historical fiction the chapter notes alone are worth the price of the book. Heimerdinger continues his action-packed story of a modern-day family gifted with the opportunity to travel back in time to Book of Mormon and Biblical times, but at the end of each chapter his chapter notes tell in a straight-forward manner his research into the era and events his characters encounter in his fiction tale. This is particularly true in Tower of Thunder. There’s a great story that builds to an exciting climax in the main body of the book, but there’s a subtle and perhaps more satisfying story in the framework around the pages. Reading one of Chris Heimerdinger’s Tennis Shoes adventures is a lot like reading one of Jan Brett’s picture books.
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