Imagine being whisked from your comfortable modern-day world to the year 1827. No microwaves or Tylenol; no planes or cars or telephones. Not even a TV! Such is free-lance artist Emma Franklin’s dilemma when she inherits a farm in MacKinlay, North Carolina, and inadvertently stumbles upon a mystery involving the town’s namesake, a man despised and scorned by everyone she meets.

Shocked at their reaction to her as the new owner, she’s stunned even further when she discovers she’s actually the man’s descendent. Determined to unravel the puzzle, she steps through a rusty iron gate beside the farmhouse and is suddenly thrust 177 years into the past.

And the man who first meets her when she awakes on the far side of the gate is none other than her ancestor, Scottish immigrant Gavin MacKinlay! Book Excerpt>

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Birth of the Story . . .

When author Leanna Sain was visiting a friend and saw the “Gate to Nowhere,” she envisioned that passing through the gate would trigger a journey back in time. It wasn’t long before she began to turn her time-travel vision into a great story. Leanna is currently working on the Gate to Nowhere sequel, Return to Nowhere.

Return to Nowhere

Charlotte "Charlie" MacKinlay wants to be a doctor above all else, but circumstances thwart her dream on every hand. She turns her sights to learning the secrets of Indian medicine instead, but the Cherokee are all gone.

After a sticky meeting with MacKinlay's handsome new pastor, her dreams turn to him instead of her dreaded upcoming arranged marriage to 'The MacGregor', a man she's never met.

When her mother shares the gate's secret, Charlie seizes the opportunity to go back to a time when the town's Indian name meant "Nowhere." She finds Half Moon, a Cherokee medicine woman, but some of the lessons learned have nothing to do with medicine. Unfortunately, the biggest challenge of her young life awaits her return to MacKinlay, and there are no answers for that.

She must meet the dreaded MacGregor, but her heart belongs to Jamie.

• married to her best friend
• lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina
• thinks homeschooling is the way to go
• co-owns 2 retail stores—Barewood Furniture & Heartland Amish Furniture
• has 5 goats: Grace, Faith, Lily, Daisy & Snickett
• has 18 laying hens = yummy, fresh brown eggs
• loves to garden—flowers, herbs, veggies & fruit
• has secret desire to live in the 19th century
• free-lance portrait artist
• trying to teach herself to knit without much luck
• 2 favorite seasons are fall & winter (love it when its cold)
• wishes she could play the guitar & piano
• gets “inspired” gazing at the mountains from her front porch swing
• would love to live “off-grid”
• got to actually meet her role model, Tasha Tudor
• believes everything's better with music
• will make an extended trip to Europe someday

Leanna has written and illustrated stories since she was a little girl. In college she turned more toward the art end of the spectrum with a major in commercial art, but she kept her love of writing alive with an English minor.

In 1985, she married her best friend, Randy, and the years 1989 and 1992 added two sons to the family.

In addition to painting freelance portraits, she co-owns Barewood Furniture and Heartland Amish Furniture with her husband.

She and her family live on Miracle Hill Farm right in the middle of five acres of the most beautiful Blue Ridge Mountain property in western North Carolina. They share the farm with a herd of Nubian goats and a flock of chickens. Her hobbies include tending her vegetable, herb, and flower gardens, reading, quilting, crocheting, sewing and the list goes on….

She’s busily at work on the second and third books in the Gate to Nowhere series.