The Dream Daughter

In April 1965, Carly is a twenty-one-year-old physical therapy student intern at a hospital rehabilitation ward in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She is assigned to Hunter Poole, a man in a wheelchair with a broken ankle whom no other therapist can reach. The staff suspects he attempted suicide by jumping from a building. When Hunter sees Carly, he reacts with startling recognition, insisting she work with him because she reminds him of someone he once knew. When the Beatles' "Ticket to Ride" plays on the radio for the first time in the United States, Hunter sings along with every word, which should be impossible. Carly is charmed and introduces Hunter to her older sister, Patti.

Five years later, Carly is twenty-six, widowed, and pregnant. Her husband, Joe, an army structural engineer, was killed in Vietnam shortly after Thanksgiving 1969, and Carly discovered her pregnancy weeks later. She lives in the family's beach cottage in Nags Head, North Carolina, with Patti and Hunter, who are married with a one-year-old son, John Paul. Hunter arranges for Carly to join an experimental fetal ultrasound study at the National Institutes of Health. The ultrasound reveals severe narrowing of the baby's aortic valve, a condition that will prove fatal. The doctor says the baby is a girl and that nothing can be done. Carly refuses an abortion, because the baby is all she has left of Joe.

Days later, Hunter reveals that he was born in 1986 and traveled to 1965 from 2018 as part of Temporal Solutions, a secret time-travel program created by his mother, Myra, an astrophysicist. Travelers pass through naturally occurring time portals by "stepping off" from a height of at least 16 feet at a calculated moment. A danger known as the "fifth-trip rule" means that any traveler who attempts a fifth journey vanishes permanently; Myra herself disappeared on her own fifth trip. After his first wife died, Hunter volunteered to travel to 1965, where a storm threw off his landing and broke his ankle. He fell in love with Patti and stayed. Carly is skeptical until Hunter predicts the Kent State massacre days before it occurs. He tells her fetal surgery exists in the 21st century and could save her baby.

Hunter calculates portal coordinates using a mainframe at Duke University. Carly must leap from the Nags Head Pier to arrive in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 23, 2001. He identifies the Gapstow Bridge in Central Park as her return stepping-off point and calculates four return portals for the weeks after her due date. He gives Carly a chronometer, cash, and a backpack, and warns her never to contact anyone from her own time while in the future.

On May 8, 1970, Carly leaps from the pier and wakes on an athletic field at Princeton. She finds Myra Poole, who reads Hunter's letter and arranges documentation: a fake driver's license, insurance, a cell phone, and a laptop. An obstetrician confirms the baby's diagnosis. Myra secures an appointment with Dr. Cole Perelle, a fetal surgeon conducting an experimental cardiac study at a Manhattan hospital. Carly is accepted despite a 30-percent fatality rate. The surgery goes well, and Carly spends weeks on modified bed rest near the hospital, living in isolation as checkups show the baby's heart improving.

In July 2001, Carly gives birth to Joanna, named after Joe and Carly's mother. The baby is admitted to the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, connected to monitors and a ventilator. Celeste Purvis, Joanna's primary nurse, guides Carly through the routines. The cardiologist confirms the surgery saved Joanna's life but that a valve dilation is needed. The dilation succeeds, yet setbacks follow: Joanna develops a severe allergic reaction to breast milk and then a resistant bacterial infection. Carly misses one return portal after another. She cannot reach Myra, who has changed all contact information. With one portal remaining and Joanna still hospitalized, Carly takes the final portal alone, planning to return to 1970 and have Hunter calculate new ones.

On September 9, 2001, Carly steps off the Gapstow Bridge carrying a carton of eggs in a baby sling as a test and lands on the Jockey's Ridge dunes at dawn. The eggs are intact, proving a baby could survive the journey. Hunter calculates a new portal for that night. After Carly steps off the pier and vanishes, he realizes with horror that she will arrive in New York on the morning of September 11, 2001. The atmospheric disturbance from the collapsing World Trade Center towers throws the calculations off by twelve years. Carly lands in New York on September 11, 2013.

She rushes to the hospital and discovers twelve years have passed. Celeste Purvis, now the neonatal intensive care unit supervisor, recognizes Carly and explains that the staff assumed she died in the 9/11 attacks. Child Protective Services placed Joanna in foster care. Carly travels to Alexandria, Virginia, to find Myra. Myra refuses to send Carly back to 2001: That journey would be Carly's fourth trip, and returning from it would require a fifth, meaning she would vanish permanently. Myra learns that Joanna was adopted at ten months by a family named Van Dyke in Summit, New Jersey. Rather than take the portal home, Carly travels to Summit, finds work at a bed-and-breakfast, and engineers meetings with twelve-year-old Joanna by walking the inn's golden retriever past the Van Dyke house.

Carly bonds with Joanna over dog training, games, and bracelets, and begins babysitting regularly. Reading Joanna's baby book, she weeps, recognizing she cannot take Joanna from this loving family.

A Vietnam veteran at the inn prompts Carly to visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, DC. She searches for Joe's name but cannot find it. A park ranger discovers that Joe was not killed: He was a prisoner of war who returned home on February 12, 1973. The army had made a clerical error. Carly realizes she must return to 1970 to be there when Joe comes home, which means leaving Joanna permanently.

Myra calculates a portal from the tree house railing in the Van Dykes' backyard for that night. Joanna discovers Carly there, and with only minutes remaining, Carly tells her the truth: She is Joanna's birth mother, she traveled from 1970, and Joe survived Vietnam. Carly climbs onto the railing, tells Joanna she loves her, and steps off. She wakes in the surf in Nags Head and walks home. In 1971, Myra herself arrives at their door, having taken her fifth and final trip to live near her son.

In February 1973, Carly waits on the tarmac at Travis Air Force Base as a plane carrying released prisoners of war lands. A skeletal man in a dress uniform descends the ramp. Joe pulls Carly close. "Hey, girl," he says.

In the epilogue, set in June 2022, Carly is seventy-nine, sweeping sand from the porch, when a young woman approaches from the beach with two dogs. It is Joanna, now a college student who has spent nine years keeping Carly's secret. Carly shows Joanna the rubber-band bracelet Joanna once made her, repaired over the decades. Then she leads Joanna up the porch steps to meet her father.