In A Familiar Rain, neuroscientist, Alex Hemmer is committed to developing a drug that would enable subjects to relive their most treasured past experiences. If he could achieve success, it would mean that Alex could revisit his deceased, young wife.

A retired high-school English teacher, author John Geddes said,

"I love the idea of time travel...I wrote it into my curriculum ~ creating a Time Travel unit studying books from Jack Finney, H.G. Wells and others."

Geddes was fascinated by Wilder Penfield's* explorations of the human brain in which Penfield actually caused some of his test subjects to relive past events.

The backdrop for his book is Geddes' own alma mater, the University of Toronto, where his professors included Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye.
http://www.johngeddes.ca/

* (1891 - 1976) Canadian Neurosurgeon