As America prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, historian Dr. Eliza Rowan unveils the Lantern Array, a groundbreaking device designed to witness the past without changing it. But when the experiment destabilizes, Eliza is pulled into 1565 St. Augustine, the violent birth of the nation's oldest city.
Stranded between centuries, she encounters a world shaped by survival, conquest, and fragile alliances. There she meets Apochi, a Timucuan man whose quiet wisdom forces her to reconsider everything she believed about history-and the stories nations choose to tell.
Meanwhile, in 2026, scientist Dr. Gabriel Navarro struggles to bring her home as her signals fade across time.
As fireworks prepare to celebrate America's Semiquincentennial, Eliza must face a difficult truth:
History is not only what we celebrate.
It is what we choose to remember.
Lanterns Over Matanzas is a powerful historical time-travel novel about memory, identity, and the courage to speak the names history nearly erased.