Query: Hollow

Light Fantasy YA
89,000 words. 
 

Living in the treacherous Appalachian mountain terrain of skunk-smelling Pole Cat Hollow, reluctant country girl, Carys, must prove through a series of trials that she can protect her family’s secret and fulfill the expectations of the living and the dead.

On her fifteenth birthday, Carys will cater to the living. She must travel in time to find extinct ingredients for a prized but illegal moonshine recipe. If successful, she will prove to her patronizing, backwoods community that a girl can lead despite only having a conceptual understanding of the theory of relativity. Aside from a minor scuffle with what may have been a pterodactyl, this task turns out to be simple enough.

However, she soon learns via cryptic messages from a dead ancestor, Inman, that the role she was destined to serve is that of the female balancer the History, and she must guide souls through the realm of the dead in this region where the Earth requires a feminine energy to traverse the thin veil.

Inman's ashes have been crystallized into a life-sustaining diamond, which Carys must find before his widow. In her search, Carys’ survival and leadership skills are put to the test. She and her friends find themselves entombed under a cemetery, lost in the cretaceous, harassed by a cave bear, forced to forage for food, make squirrel caps fashionable and get caught in a complicated time loop of which Carys needs to unscramble, using her own wits and feminine instincts.

If Carys doesn’t find the diamond, Inman’s vain and unnaturally young widow will assume leadership of the secret community, expose the family’s magic, and use her negative feminine energy to permanently disrupt the balance between the living and the dead. 

Updated query for Hollow History after critiques from Michelle Hauck and Mina Vaughn. I appreciate any and all critiques.