Gretchen Suárez-Peña, Writer 

Sloan Grant(s) Received: 2024, Carnegie Mellon University, Screenwriting Award

Project Type: Feature 

Genre: Drama

Length: 109 pages 

Field of Science: Dendrochronology, AstroPhysics

Stage: Development 

Synopsis: 

For Such a Time is a fictional retelling of the true-life events involving the collegiate research conducted by a professor and their assistants comparing solar cycle, tree ring data, and the Miyake event.
Luz is the daughter of a Pentecostal pastor. Her whole life, she’s said that she is going to be a nurse, never mind that she excels at coding and calculus and hates biology. She is accepted to the local prestigious Christian university, but as she’s taking her prerequisite physics classes at a neighboring affiliated “secular” university, she falls in love with physics and dendrochronology – the study of dating through tree rings. She learns about the destructive power of the Carrington and Miyake Events and what they could do to modern society: crippling all technological infrastructure. She joins the professor on staff as a research assistant. Her work takes up her time. She misses mandatory chapel at her college. She starts failing biology which threatens her scholarship and status in her nursing program. Luz’s family is upset with her choice to work this job. Familial expectations abound – she’s wasting her time. Her focus is out of step with “God’s will” for her life. Her “fortune teller” grandmother who she loves is dying of cancer. Oh yeah, and that professor she’s working for is her mom’s ex-best friend plus she may or may not have fallen for her smart and handsome son.
Is there such a thing as patterns in time? Will knowing the past help us predict the future? Could clues be written in the trees? Can her research make a difference in the world, or is she just wasting her time? How does science win? They provide the research available that dates the Newfoundland Village. Vikings were in the Americas before Columbus! A win for archaeologists and a new look at history! Time is not being wasted. Time is being remembered. Luz is absorbing the information from the atmosphere around her and is making her ring in the family tree. Maybe she was never meant to be a nurse. She probably wouldn’t be a good one anyway, but her research, she believes, in time, can help protect the technology and infrastructure that connects all our lives thereby saving the world in her way.