Three Wishes by Lisa T. Bergren

Book 1 of Rivers of Time: California

Summary:

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR. BECAUSE YOU JUST MIGHT GET IT.

Zara Ruiz is a normal California girl on the verge of graduating from high school and thinking about her dawning future. But when dusk brings a shattering loss—and she discovers a priceless object in the shallows of a tide pool—she is thrust a hundred-and-eighty years into the past. There she meets handsome ranchero Javier de la Ventura—who has big dreams and secret sorrows—along with his enchanting family, in a land that is at once familiar, and yet utterly foreign.

Between cattle rustlers, pirates and a growing call for statehood, it is not a peaceful time to be a Mexican settler in young Alta California. But Zara must decide if she's discovered what she longs for most in the past, or if her heart's THREE WISHES can only be found in the present.

Opening Lines:

"It's all yours. The apartment. The restaurant. She left it all to you."

I stared at him. I knew I was doing little more than blinking, but so many words came to my head at once . . . and yet none seemed to add up to complete sentences. 

"I'm only seventeen," I finally spit out. Which pretty much summed up all my scattered thoughts. There was no way I could do this alone. How was I supposed to figure out my next steps without my abuela?