Synopsis: The Ancestors’ Watch/  

The only way Teri Mello could straighten out her great-aunt’s garbled accounts of their family’s multiracial history would be to go back in time. Too bad that’s impossible. Except that it isn’t. In an incident involving a duck and a dog, Teri, her little sister, Rosie, her great-aunt Nena, and her new friend Mike pass through a portal and end up on their ancestors’ land in Brazil just before the abolishment of slavery in 1888. Immediately, fortune hunters kidnap coffee-colored Rosie, who they mistake for a runaway slave. There’s only one family in the area rich enough to own slaves: their own, the Mellos. After a stint with some unscrupulous cowhands, they make their way to the homestead, hoping to get help for Rosie’s return. Teri takes a renewed interest in her aunt’s tales, especially one about Serafina whose differing tragic endings are recounted in the stories that don’t quite add up. The stories describe a secret romance between Serafina and a soon-to-be-freed slave. Teri thinks Serafina must be her ancestor, the one who ended up married to a slave and began their family of many hues. But Tia Nena’s stories don’t point to that outcome. Teri meets her powerful great-great-grandfather and his twin daughters, Alvina and Serafina from Tia Nena’s stories. They all have unusual caramel-colored eyes like her own, so they must be her ancestors. But why are they all white? Teri’s family is multi-racial. It makes no sense. Teri eventually finds Rosie and the watch and she meets the slave girl Maria, who could be one of her ancestors. In none of the family stories did anyone ever mention slaves or slave-owning relatives. Teri helps Maria’s dream come true—to have her baby after slavery is abolished. Teri finally untangles Tia Nena’s tales of her extended family’s past. She becomes great friends with Mike during their journey and learns that love, shared experience, and family history can tie people even more powerfully to family, to the past, and to each other than chains or conventions can keep them bound against their will.