by Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff (@RachelLincolnSarnoff)
Adult Book Club/Women's Fiction
Agents can request additional materials via our Agent Request Form.
Query
I’m thrilled to present THE BOOK OF HOURS, a 64,000-word, dual-timeline upmarket debut with romantic and speculative elements. Following the story of a middle-aged woman who accidentally time-travels into her 22-year-old body and 1999 Paris, the book will resonate with fans of Rebecca Serle’s Once and Again and Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow.
Hours before an anniversary trip to Paris, Jackie’s husband announces he’s leaving her. She’s heartbroken but not surprised: Jackie always questioned why Luke chose her in the first place, and now that their daughter’s left for college, what would hold him back? Desperate for an escape, she decides to take the trip alone. In Paris, Jackie realizes she hasn’t just crossed continents but decades – it’s 1999, the year she met Luke in the sixth arrondissement. Living again in her 22-year-old body forces Jackie to examine why she doubted her self-worth for so long. Hoping for a relationship reset, she guides Luke on a whirlwind path through Paris – from the Pere Lachaise cemetery to Shakespeare & Company bookstore – steering him towards an Eiffel Tower proposal she never got the first time around. But when an innocent flirtation with a new acquaintance torpedoes her connection with Luke and threatens their daughter’s existence, Jackie realizes she doesn’t need a ring – and Luke loved her from the start. Racing to the present, she overshoots into a future where he no longer exists. Desperate to save her husband and family, Jackie boomerangs back in a last-ditch effort to reclaim the life she finally realizes she deserves.
I lived in Paris in the 1990s and returned two decades later to find so much unchanged that it felt as if I had time traveled – that’s when I began writing THE BOOK OF HOURS. National Book Award winner Charles Yu blurbed an early draft, calling it “a charming coming-of-age story…a wistful, thoughtful meditation on love, aging, intimacy, regret, and the body.” I'm a writer and climate communicator who was interviewed on the “Today” show and published in the Washington Post; I hold master’s degrees in fiction and journalism. I have 9,000 subscribers on Substack, host an author-interview series on Instagram, mentor young writers through 826LA, lead the Santa Monica Silent Book Club, and lecture on climate fiction at UC Santa Barbara, my alma mater.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
First Five Pages
October 17, 10 PM
The cabin door slams shut as I peer over the seat again, searching for Luke’s broad shoulders and Cheshire grin. Stragglers rush their carry-ons down the aisle, but they’re all strangers – not him. I pull in a ragged breath, check the phone again. No response. Suddenly, it’s real. I had boarded the plane in a delusional haze, hoping he was right behind me, praying he had changed his mind.
He hadn’t.
My vision swims and I tilt my head, blink back the sting of salt. A flight attendant wearing a crimson uniform with matching lipstick recites travel instructions in French and the plane’s engine rumbles to life. I loosen the seat belt and unbutton the top button of my jeans, wriggle deeper into the child-sized seat and grab my book as a distraction. But when I open it, two white gardenia petals drift out. I realize, with a pang of regret, that Luke must have slipped them in this morning – before everything went sideways. I slam the cover shut but the scent hangs in the air like a taunt. How can I go without him?
A woman sits quietly next to the window. We’re probably about the same age – she has the same just-passed-forty wrinkles around her eyes. Her hair is prematurely white and luminous, loosely tied in a fishtail braid. We both glance at the empty middle seat, where he should be sitting. The sight is a shard of glass that slices through my composure and I grip the armrests so hard my fingernails turn white.
“Looks like it’s just the two of us,” the woman says. “Nothing in the seatbacks. Don’t you think people sleep better without screens?”
I nod, gritting my teeth. Outside the window, yellow lights blink in the dark. “I think people do everything better without screens.”
“And no charging ports or plugs, this must be an old plane.” She taps the relic ashtray.
“Cigarettes are about the only thing I don’t miss,” I say. “Sometimes I think I’m living in the wrong century.”
The woman tilts her head. “Wasn’t it Einstein who said the distinction between past and present is just a stubbornly persistent illusion?”
“Tell that to climate change.” I sigh. Coffee, the faint scent of lavender. A muffled ding as someone calls for a flight attendant. I release my grip on the plastic and slide my hands to my lap, deflated.
She smiles. “Work trip?”
“No,” I say, deflecting. “And you – going home or visiting?”
“Just passing through,” she says.
Her voice holds remnants of a French accent. Her bright blue eyes are fringed with thick lashes. I can see this woman living in a bohemian Venice beach house or a glamorous apartment off the Champs-Elysées.
“I’m Jackie.” I hold my hand out.
“Gwen.” A quick release.
“Nice to meet you.” Even the pleasantries are exhausting.
I check my phone again: nothing. And the battery is just a thin sliver of red. I shimmy my hips out of the vise, dig around in my tote until I remember where my charger is: plugged in next to the bed. Shit. In my frenzied exit from the empty house, I must have forgotten it; I’ll have to buy one when we land. I hold the phone like a talisman, give myself a few seconds to take in the wallpaper photo of Cara – and try not to think about her unpacking in her dorm room without me. I can’t cry again, not in front of all these strangers.
I power off my phone and stow it, then crack the spine of my newest notebook and scribble on the page. October 17, 2019: to Paris, alone. old plane/ashtrays, dead phone, boho neighbor. Finally, I unwrap my last bar: two hundred calories of pure protein. I take the first bite, ignoring the grainy texture. If I eat it all, maybe I can sleep through dinner. Tomorrow, maybe things will be different. At least I’ll have a hotel room to cry in.
As we taxi down the runway, I wiggle into a more comfortable position, wind my vintage gold watch, and tuck the soft camel hair coat around my legs. A quick side-eye as Gwen pushes up her sleeve. Her arm is covered in a startling array of tattoos, dense as a page filled with words. Delicate black-and-white dandelions cascade down the inside of her left arm and a yellow rose peeks out from under her right cuff. She catches my curious look, smiles and pushes the fabric up further. Pink camellias nestle next to purple irises, accented with floating swaths of empty space as if wind breathes through the design.
“That’s gorgeous,” I say. “I’ve always wanted to get one but never found anything I wanted to live with for the rest of my life. Plus, my husband –”
I stumble on the word, and she cocks her head. The engines roar and my stomach drops as the wheels leave the asphalt. I am going to Paris. Alone. The truth hits like an anvil. Tears swell again but I won’t let them drop. Not that anyone would notice. The businesswoman across the aisle flips a page of her Los Angeles Times; the teenager in front of her scrolls through photos on her phone. Both demonstrate their own kind of purpose. And what’s mine? This trip is supposed to be a second chance for Luke and me. But that was before. How could I have thought Paris was still a good idea? Tomorrow, I’ll be sitting at a café instead of my kitchen, but the chair across from me will be empty.
Breath catches in my throat and Gwen glances over. Her eyes soften as she reaches to rest her hand on mine. Her skin is cool and smooth, and for a moment I feel my mother’s palm. She squeezes reassurance, then returns to buttoning her cuff.
“Your husband doesn’t like tattoos?”
The plane shudders. “My husband doesn’t like me.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Gwen says. “That can’t be true.”
“It is true.” I choke out the words as panic floods my body, the plastic sides of the seat pressing in like a trash compactor. He’s never coming back. I push my palms against my shaking thighs as blood thuds in my ears. A black cloud settles over my vision. I fumble at the tray table and rest my head on my arms, panting like a dog.
“Jackie?” Gwen asks.
“I just – I can’t –”
She leans over, touches my shoulder. “Take a deep breath.”
I gulp air as she moves her hand down between my shoulder blades.
“Breathe out.” She pushes down gently and I manage a full exhale.
“Now in and out again.”
I breathe until my heartbeat slows and vision clears. Finally, I sit up. A flight attendant rattles a cart down the aisle. Cool mist sends goosebumps down my arms. A cork pops in first class. If it wasn’t for the plastic cups, I’d order a drink.
Gwen smiles warmly. “Can you talk about it?”
My head spins. How can I put into words the mess I’ve made of my life? How can I tell her how alone and untethered I feel? I pause, scan my brain for how best to answer, settle on the simplest first: “My mother has dementia and my daughter just left for college.”
Each word is a stone, but as I speak them to this stranger, their weight on my chest seems to lessen. The engine hums and the plane levels out over a bank of puffy white clouds.
“The sandwich generation.” Gwen shakes her head. “But that can’t be everything. No one has a panic attack over what they saw coming.”
I take a deep breath, wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans. “My husband and I met in Paris, twenty years ago,” I say. “Our anniversary is on Monday. And he just –”
Gwen raises an eyebrow. “He just what?”
“He should be sitting there.” I point to the middle seat. “And now I’m going alone.”
Gwen sighs. “Can I share something with you?”
“I certainly shared enough with you.” Heat pounds in my cheeks.
“Listen, I could be completely off base,” Gwen says. “But I don’t think this is the end of the story.”
“It seems pretty conclusive. I get home on Tuesday. He’s probably already moved out.”
“And tomorrow we wake up in Paris,” Gwen says. “A lot can happen in five days.”