Synopsis:
March 31, 1995
Massachusetts
Years after Al appears to a young girl and leads her to believe he is
her guardian angel, the girl, now grown, loses her faith and goes to a
monastery to die, and Sam, having leaped into the body of a priest,
must prevent her death.
Sam has leapt into a Catholic priest named Samuel O’ Keefe, and it’s
his job to help a young woman named Teresa Bruckner, who he had contact
with in another leap. She was a little
girl at the time, but she remembers the promise of Angel Al that he
would come back and has been waiting for him ever since.
Will she finally get her wish before it’s too late? Who is the mysterious woman Angela and what is
her connection to Sam, Al and Teresa? What is she there to do?
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Place:
Windy Bluff, Massachusetts
Name of Person Leaped Into:
Father Samuel O’Keefe.
Project Trivia:
The Committee (specifically Weitzman) is stirring up trouble; the
project is being audited.
Sam Trivia:
Sam has a connection with Father O’Keefe; he was one of Sam’s
professors.
Sam has the opportunity to change history with a
phone call to himself.
Al Trivia:
We get some backstory on Al’s past and his connection to the Catholic
Church.
Al’s fedora is important here.
Al has to deal with an audit by the committee,
and three beautiful women have been sent to the Project to perform this
task. Al wonders if he can pass his quarters off as guest quarters.
Miscellaneous Trivia:
The QL episodes It’s a
Wonderful Leap and Another
Mother are significant here, as characters from both episodes
appear in this story!
The Genesis, Leap Home and Jimmy QL episodes are
mentioned. Kid Cody (The Right Hand
of God) , Frankie LaPalma (Double Identity) and Jesse Tyler (The Color
of Truth) are mentioned.
Writers:
L. Elizabeth Storm
Copyright Date:
January 1997
Leap Date:
April 1995
Regular Characters:
Sam, Al, Ziggy
Guest Characters:
Teresa
Angela
The nuns at the monastery
George Smallwood
Lillian Marco
Stephen Marco
The supporting characters at the
Project:
Gooshie, Tina, Donna
Guest character notes:
Teresa has gotten mixed up with the wrong
person and is hiding out at a monastery. George,
Teresa’s sleazy drug-dealing boyfriend, has a connection with a senator
trying to shut down the project. Lillian Marco and her son
Stephen arrive at the monastery; Lillian has a special reason to want
to see Father O'Keefe. Angela's goal to save a little
boy and see that Father O’Keefe does right by someone he has been
working with. The nuns are thrilled
when they see what they believe to be angels, but
the Mother Superior isn’t happy about the idea of publicity.
Characters that appeared in QL
TV episodes:
We saw Teresa in the episode Another Mother.
Angela was in the It’s a Wonderful Leap
episode.
The Committee is mentioned in several episodes;
we saw them in Honeymoon
Express.
Personal Review:
This is my favorite QL novel. This leap
concerns Teresa, a child Sam and Al met on an earlier leap who received
a promise from Al that he would come back someday.
Years go by; Teresa is now a young woman of about 19 who
has gone through some rough times, made some bad choices and gotten
involved with the wrong people. Al hasn’t
come back, so she assumes he lied to her and decides she can’t really
count on anyone and is on her own. Sam
leaps into a priest named Samuel O’Keefe, a priest who happens to be
scheduled to be at the monastery at the same time as Teresa. Al and Ziggy tell Sam he is there to save
Teresa. Angela, who also has a
connection to Sam and Al from another leap, is there on her own mission. Much to Al’s irritation, she
proceeds to make herself at home at the Project so that she can talk to
the person Sam has leaped into. The author
has a good understanding of the characters. Elizabeth
brings the elements of the two episodes together to weave a moving
story about faith, forgiveness and moving on.
Best Line:
(Teresa puts on Al’s fedora)
Teresa: Cutting
edge stuff. How do I look?
Al: Like an angel.
Best Scene:
I loved the interaction between Al and Angela; their banter was
hilarious on the television episode and Elizabeth does a great job of
capturing that.
The scene at the hospital after Teresa and Sam
are rescued is cute. The interaction
between the nuns, Teresa, Sam and Al is clever and well done.
The scene at the end between Al and Teresa is
just beautiful. It’s a moment of healing
and peace for both of them.
Say What?
I found it a bit strange at first that the nuns
could see Al and Teresa couldn’t, but Elizabeth does a good job with
this and it did make sense as I got further into the book.
I was also a little puzzled about the bit about the folks
at the project remembering Angela, but when I thought about how she
wasn’t remembered on the QL episode I understood the reasoning behind
it. She was helping people and not
focused on herself, so they started to remember her.
Quotable Quotes:
(Al talking to Father O’Keefe about Sam doing confessions):
Look, Sam’s there to keep Teresa from dyin’,
okay? So whatever he has to do to keep that from happening, he’ll do it. Sorry if that offends you, Father,
but all we’ve got to go on is-
Faith…
Is the facts before us.
(Teresa talking to Sam/Father O’Keefe)
I didn’t see them, but Sister Mary
Catherine-that’s the nun who was there-she did. She
said they were
angels! Father O’Keefe, I really think
they came back for me after all!
(At the hospital after Teresa is saved)
Sister Mary Catherine: Would
you prefer ‘Dr. Beckett?’
Sister Mary Catherine: Oh,
hi, Al, you’re beginning to fade.
(Father O'Keefe and Al talking at the Project)
Father O'Keefe: But if this trip into the
future has taught me one thing, it's that people are more important.
ISBN Number:
1-57297-206-8
Author’s Notes:
The author calculates the date of Sam’s first leap in the pilot episode
of QL to be May 12, 1995, based on a Lakers game Al had gone to see. He was late getting to Sam because the game
went into overtime. Six years after
Genesis was broadcast, the Lakers actually had a playoff game on May
16, 1995, and it went into overtime.
Info about author:
Thanks to someone on the Al’s Place message board, I found out that
Elizabeth also wrote the full length novel fanzine Green Eggs and Ham
#10. I also found out that she
possibly wrote an article (or articles) for EzineArticles.com, but I
couldn’t confirm for sure this was the same author.
Quantum Leap Podcast Book Club: Angels Unaware
Prepare for a bit of divine intervention, because it’s time for Angels Unaware!
Earn your wings with hosts Allison Pregler, Matt Dale and Christopher
DeFilippis as the QLP Book Club discusses L. Elizabeth Storm’s novel
that sees Sam and Al resume their roles as guardian angels for Teresa
Bruckner as she faces a deadly future.
And they have some heavenly help from another guardian angel they’ve worked with before.
This joint sequel to Another Mother and It’s a Wonderful Leap tackles
deep questions of faith, doubt, and the miraculous virtues of a cheap
hot dog.
Tell us what you think!
Send us a letter at Quantum Leap Podcast, P.O. Box 542, Bayport, NY 11705
Leave us a voicemail by calling (707) 847-6682.
Send feedback and MP3s to quantumleappodcast@gmail.com.
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