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Time Will Break the World
On the second to last day of summer school in 1984, Calvin and Jason Schott hijack a school bus carrying nineteen students, an unthinkable act of violence that devastates the community of Brookwood. Thirty years later, twin sisters and survivors of the ordeal, Brenda and Emily Mashburn, are forced to relive the kidnapping as they film a documentary about the event in an attempt to thwart Calvin's looming parole hearing. Meanwhile, Jason fights for his brother's release, hoping that a reunited family can finally bring peace to their elderly mother and ease the guilt he feels over his role in the kidnapping. The result is a feud between the two families, with neither side willing to back down.
Inspired by the largest kidnapping-for-ransom scheme in American history, Time Will Break the World weaves a rich backdrop of place and circumstance-long-term trauma, dysfunctional family legacies, sibling rivalry, a granite quarry, and the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
Inspired by the largest kidnapping-for-ransom scheme in American history, Time Will Break the World weaves a rich backdrop of place and circumstance-long-term trauma, dysfunctional family legacies, sibling rivalry, a granite quarry, and the Los Angeles Summer Olympics.
294 pages, Paperback
Published July 1, 2023
2 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
Aaron Jacobs
3 books10 followersAaron Jacobs is the author of the novel The Abundant Life, which Samantha Bee called, "delightfully unique, hilarious, and acerbic." Other writing of his has appeared in Tin House, Alaska Quarterly Review, Roi Fainéant Press, JMWW, The Main Street Rag, and elsewhere.
He lives mostly in the Catskills with his wife, Katie, and their dog, Monty.
He lives mostly in the Catskills with his wife, Katie, and their dog, Monty.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 2, 2023
An amazing book. Thought provoking, thrilling, funny, sad. The writing is great on a sentence level and also really well structured. The characters feel so true to life that I find myself thinking about them as if they're real people. I loved it.
March 11, 2024
Proof that some of the best writing is coming out of indie publishers. This book needs to be a film!
August 11, 2023
I've followed some of the buzz around this book and it's interesting. Mr. Jacobs makes it clear his novel was inspired by a real event but not based on the actual Cowchilla Kidnapping of 1976. Needless to say, I had to look up the real event and it's chilling. What the media chronicles of the kidnapping lack is any mention of the emotional toll the event undoubtedly took on the young children involved. And this is where Jacobs picks the story up (and indeed, this is the job of the novel as a literary form). The names, dates, and historical context have changed (although some significant circumstances remain intact), but the brilliance of this novel is its ability to convey the psychological/emotional trauma beset on those individuals involved in the incident with still a lifetime ahead of them to live. Interestingly (and astutely), the author chooses twin sisters--both involved in the kidnapping--as his main characters. This allows him to use them as foils for each other. The reader witnesses how the two identical twins react differently to the event 20+ years after the fact. Indeed, they both remain traumatized, but the experience has had different indelible effects on their respective lives. That is not to say the story is entirely literary in its scope. The plot is interesting and moves the story along much like any crime/thriller novel would. The tandem lines of past and present always create tension. In the end, it's a very satisfying read--one that walks that fine line between literary and crime fiction. If you like your crime fiction with a bit more nuance than the typical offering, this is the book for you. Highly recommended.
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August 5, 2023This heartfelt story is told to submerge the reader into the fateful day when lives would change forever. Following two twin sister's on their journey to create a documentary about the largest kidnapping in American history keeps you hooked until the end! With time jumps between modern day and the day fateful day in August of 1984. The story also tells us of the journey of one of the kidnappers trying up for parole and his struggles all these years later. Check it out, easy read and a true crime story everyone should still be talking about.
July 30, 2023
Separating life from art is not easy, especially when it comes to the 1976 Chowchilla, CA school bus kidnapping. And TIME WILL BREAK THE WORLD, based on the same subject, is an uneasy art.
The real crime was apparently so far out in left field that madnesses like the Manson Family massacre and Ted Bundy’s monstrosities are part of contemporary conversation, yet Chowchilla has somehow been set aside like the names of the kidnappers and still-living victims.
A “48 Hours” documentary on the Chowchilla event details how 26 schoolchildren, ages five to 14, were abducted by three wealthy, spoiled and psychotic idiots who ran through their savings accounts and wanted $5 million in ransom from the state of California, as if they deserved it. Instead of throwing these miscreants in prison for life, the state set them free after only 30 years and something like 60 parole hearings.
Enter Aaron Jacobs. In TIME WILL BREAK THE WORLD, he examines the minds of selected characters, none of whom are based on the actual victims, and how the trauma of Chowchilla haunted them ever since.
With Jacobs’ change in time zones, the book begins in 1984 and brings readers to 2013, when Brenda and Emily Mashburn are face-to-face with their kidnappers, Jason and Calvin Schott. The twin sisters attempt to make a documentary on the event that ruined their childhoods and is now eating away at the rest of their lives. As the story flexes between 1984 and 2013, the devious Schott brothers have lost their family money, yet greed tells them that kidnapping a “precious” busload of kids in exchange for $5 million is a cool idea.
In Jacobs’ “Chowchilla 1984,” Calvin ponders the doom he’s planning for each character in the book, including himself, with the Summer Olympics as a backdrop --- one of the reasons Chowchilla never became part of the collective consciousness: “I didn’t know what blood doping was. I didn’t know about the rank hypocrisies and moral failings of the International Olympic Committee and its chairman, Avery Brundage, who after WWII allowed known Nazis and Italian fascists to remain on the committee.” It doesn’t take a brainiac to know that the Olympics suck.
There is no world peace, and Calvin is still ignorant of this. He grew up during the 1968 murders in Mexico, the 1972 killings in Munich, and the steroids of 1976. To Calvin, life itself is vague, including the challenges that he and his brother face in the loose hypnosis of a catty land grabber who hijacks their cash, right at the same time that their mother, Bertie (think insane, domineering Cincinnati Reds baseball queen Marge Schott), starts charging the loveless, sexless “boys” rent if they intend to keep living at home.
Jacobs subtly says that America’s mundane Olympics obsession consumed the media’s focus from the largest kidnapping event in our history. What makes this book tough is Trumpian callousness --- of the crime and our criminal “justice” system --- so the Schott brothers wind up getting out of prison to haunt the once-child victims now in adulthood. Our fearsome Mashburn sisters invite more trouble by stalking the men who kidnapped them in the first place, yet the comeuppance is rather hip in Jacobs’ fictional take.
TIME WILL BREAK THE WORLD takes us beyond the forgotten and into the minds of American children as victims. We take a 120-mile detour that sometimes literally buries you and me under miles of bullsh*t, so we are "existentially unlucky," if anything, to make it back home again.
Beware, America. There’s a new 1935-era Thomas Wolfe in the driver’s seat.
Reviewed by Rachael Stark
The real crime was apparently so far out in left field that madnesses like the Manson Family massacre and Ted Bundy’s monstrosities are part of contemporary conversation, yet Chowchilla has somehow been set aside like the names of the kidnappers and still-living victims.
A “48 Hours” documentary on the Chowchilla event details how 26 schoolchildren, ages five to 14, were abducted by three wealthy, spoiled and psychotic idiots who ran through their savings accounts and wanted $5 million in ransom from the state of California, as if they deserved it. Instead of throwing these miscreants in prison for life, the state set them free after only 30 years and something like 60 parole hearings.
Enter Aaron Jacobs. In TIME WILL BREAK THE WORLD, he examines the minds of selected characters, none of whom are based on the actual victims, and how the trauma of Chowchilla haunted them ever since.
With Jacobs’ change in time zones, the book begins in 1984 and brings readers to 2013, when Brenda and Emily Mashburn are face-to-face with their kidnappers, Jason and Calvin Schott. The twin sisters attempt to make a documentary on the event that ruined their childhoods and is now eating away at the rest of their lives. As the story flexes between 1984 and 2013, the devious Schott brothers have lost their family money, yet greed tells them that kidnapping a “precious” busload of kids in exchange for $5 million is a cool idea.
In Jacobs’ “Chowchilla 1984,” Calvin ponders the doom he’s planning for each character in the book, including himself, with the Summer Olympics as a backdrop --- one of the reasons Chowchilla never became part of the collective consciousness: “I didn’t know what blood doping was. I didn’t know about the rank hypocrisies and moral failings of the International Olympic Committee and its chairman, Avery Brundage, who after WWII allowed known Nazis and Italian fascists to remain on the committee.” It doesn’t take a brainiac to know that the Olympics suck.
There is no world peace, and Calvin is still ignorant of this. He grew up during the 1968 murders in Mexico, the 1972 killings in Munich, and the steroids of 1976. To Calvin, life itself is vague, including the challenges that he and his brother face in the loose hypnosis of a catty land grabber who hijacks their cash, right at the same time that their mother, Bertie (think insane, domineering Cincinnati Reds baseball queen Marge Schott), starts charging the loveless, sexless “boys” rent if they intend to keep living at home.
Jacobs subtly says that America’s mundane Olympics obsession consumed the media’s focus from the largest kidnapping event in our history. What makes this book tough is Trumpian callousness --- of the crime and our criminal “justice” system --- so the Schott brothers wind up getting out of prison to haunt the once-child victims now in adulthood. Our fearsome Mashburn sisters invite more trouble by stalking the men who kidnapped them in the first place, yet the comeuppance is rather hip in Jacobs’ fictional take.
TIME WILL BREAK THE WORLD takes us beyond the forgotten and into the minds of American children as victims. We take a 120-mile detour that sometimes literally buries you and me under miles of bullsh*t, so we are "existentially unlucky," if anything, to make it back home again.
Beware, America. There’s a new 1935-era Thomas Wolfe in the driver’s seat.
Reviewed by Rachael Stark
September 17, 2023
Time Will Break The World by Aaron Jacobs is a kaleidoscope of a novel re-telling a story the world was too distracted to hear. That's what makes it so relevant today. If you want to know where we've been as much as where we're going, read this book now.
November 16, 2023
The author is attempting a casual, relatable style but misses the mark completely.
October 28, 2025
My thoughts on this book could be summed up by describing this book as a unique approach to this kind of story.
You could almost view this as two short books with pieces of each alternating. The first book, taking place in 1984, is crime fiction or a bit of a thriller. A couple young adults from a formerly well-to-do family decide they’re going to get a bunch of money by kidnapping a school bus with 19 kids plus the driver and collect some ransom.
The second part of the book, taking place thirty years later in 2014, looks at what is going on with those involved, both the kidnappers, their victims, and some family members. It explores how the experience has impacted their lives and how they react to something involving the case going on at that point, specifically one of the kidnappers being considered for parole.
Throw it all together and you’ve got an interesting story that doesn’t fit the normal patterns for crime fiction or a thriller, whichever you want to use to describe this, but I found it got me thinking about a lot of things from different perspectives than normal.
**Originally written for "Books and Pals" book blog. May have received a free review copy. **
You could almost view this as two short books with pieces of each alternating. The first book, taking place in 1984, is crime fiction or a bit of a thriller. A couple young adults from a formerly well-to-do family decide they’re going to get a bunch of money by kidnapping a school bus with 19 kids plus the driver and collect some ransom.
The second part of the book, taking place thirty years later in 2014, looks at what is going on with those involved, both the kidnappers, their victims, and some family members. It explores how the experience has impacted their lives and how they react to something involving the case going on at that point, specifically one of the kidnappers being considered for parole.
Throw it all together and you’ve got an interesting story that doesn’t fit the normal patterns for crime fiction or a thriller, whichever you want to use to describe this, but I found it got me thinking about a lot of things from different perspectives than normal.
**Originally written for "Books and Pals" book blog. May have received a free review copy. **
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews