In Margaret Mater’s What Might Have Been, a lab experiment goes terribly wrong. After Deanna McClanley agrees to help a friend with a time travel project, she winds up in the desert. 

Bewildered, she makes her way to a boomtown that looks eerily like a movie set. As Deanna tries to figure out what happened and exactly where she is, she discovers that somehow she’s been transported to Tombstone, Arizona Territory, and the year is 1881. 

Deanna becomes acquainted with the most famous names of the day: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday and the Clanton Brothers. Tombstone was at the heart of a quickly growing territory that had more criminals than law and order. The cemetery at Boot Hill became a popular resting spot, and on October 26 of that year, the most famous fight in the West took place, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. 

Nothing Deanna had ever heard about Tombstone could have prepared her for life in the Wild West, but she finds comfort in the arms of Wyatt Earp’s younger brother, Morgan.

About the Author

Margaret Mater was born and raised in Moundridge, Kansas. She now lives with her husband and son in Chandler, Arizona. As a part of research for What Might Have Been, she has enjoyed several visits to the historic town of Tombstone. She was inspired to write the book back in 1993, when she saw the movie Tombstone and fell in love with the time period.