Children of the Elements: The Lost Temple

A girl is kidnapped from her small desert village and taken to a place in the heart of a mountain she thought could not exist, by a man who was little more than a fairy tale, to discover a power from legends that had stopped being told long ago. How will she escape and prevent him from using her and the others he had kidnapped in his scheme to overthrow the government and take control?
 
This is Payton's first novel, written in her first year of high school.  She lives with her two younger siblings, a brother and a sister, her parents, and her two dogs on the coast of sunny Southern California.