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River Doon: Where time is a choice
A buried valley in the Yukon. A field of time running on its own stubborn clock. One man with hours to decide which world he belongs to. From debut novelist Tim White comes
"a slow-burn masterpiece that reads like Cormac McCarthy rewriting Arrival"
(Iris Lehmann, author of The Long Quiet).
"Astonishing. A meditation on continuity, sacrifice, and the seductive weight of staying still. Impossible to put down."
(Jonah Reeves, author of The Cartographer's Wife)
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Dr. Lucas Hayes is a Stanford biologist with a career-ending problem. Fungal samples on opposite sides of the world are doing something impossible.
They are keeping time together.
The trail leads to a single valley in the remote Yukon, and to a discovery that breaks every rule Lucas thought he understood. Inside the valley, time runs slow. A week outside is a day within. The local biology is holding the world in place, and the rest of the universe is leaving it behind.
Recruited by a reclusive billionaire who has guarded the secret for fifty years, and shadowed by a military director who wants to crack the valley open and harvest what is inside, Lucas crosses the line. He finds a village. He finds a life. He finds a woman who has never lived on any clock but this one.
Then the helicopters come. The boundary is failing. And Lucas has hours to make the only choice that return to the bright, accelerating world he came from, or stay inside the slow, heavy continuity of the valley and seal the door behind him for good.
One world will keep moving without him. The other will keep him.
He cannot have both. Or can he?
---
Dr. Lucas Hayes is a Stanford biologist with a career-ending problem. Fungal samples on opposite sides of the world are doing something impossible.
They are keeping time together.
The trail leads to a single valley in the remote Yukon, and to a discovery that breaks every rule Lucas thought he understood. Inside the valley, time runs slow. A week outside is a day within. The local biology is holding the world in place, and the rest of the universe is leaving it behind.
Recruited by a reclusive billionaire who has guarded the secret for fifty years, and shadowed by a military director who wants to crack the valley open and harvest what is inside, Lucas crosses the line. He finds a village. He finds a life. He finds a woman who has never lived on any clock but this one.
Then the helicopters come. The boundary is failing. And Lucas has hours to make the only choice that return to the bright, accelerating world he came from, or stay inside the slow, heavy continuity of the valley and seal the door behind him for good.
One world will keep moving without him. The other will keep him.
He cannot have both. Or can he?
229 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 22, 2026
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