"The next day, Ronette Pulaski—the girl who was abducted and nearly killed along with Laura, and who had apparently still been taken captive—escaped and ended up in the hospital after being found wandering along a railroad trestle, just like “before.” But she also testified that Laura had wandered off into the woods before she and Leo and Jacques entered the railroad car.
Laura was never there."

It doesn't actually say Leo still went to the train car, but that Ronette did and futhermore she was still assaulted there. It's just some of the circumstances of the assault have changed: Leo and Jacques are now the guilty parties, not Leiland.

The way I read that whole section is this; although time can be meddled with, it also finds a way to keep certain fundamental events the same. Leiland still kills himself, Ronette still ends up in the train car, Coop still comes to town. The importance of these events in the grand scheme of existence is one that will be debated for a long long time, especially in light of episode 8, but I certainly don't think the end of the book clashes with the show. The Secret History you could make a good case for being non canon, and the first half of The First Dossier (the sections on Donna and family, and Annie) but I think the end chimes quite nicely with the show.

If we're talking 'ownership' of Twin Peaks, its as much Frost's as it is Lynch's. He's entitled to tell his version of the tale if he wants. I suppose the good thing about the books is, if you want, they can be as much canon or as easily ignored as you want them to be. The show will always be the core. But I like that the books are there.

After looking a little closer though I found something that really troubles me. And that's the fact that Frost wrote in TFD that in the alternative timeline, where Laura is interrupted by Cooper and never makes it to Jacques' cabin or the traincar, that Leo still goes on to the traincar - the way he phrases it is to say that even though Laura was not killed in the train car and never made it there, that Leo still went on to it. This makes no sense to me because Leo never went to the traincar in the first place. Laura, Ronette, Leland and Bob were there, never Leo. So him saying this for me most decidedly looks like a glaring error on his part. Even if we buy the mulitple timeline or even multiverse theory, where all possibilities could be real at the same time, it still would be a very random thing to include in the book and only stirs confusion.

Another one I found, and I think I am remembering this correctly, is that a photo of Hank Jennings in the RR, has a caption that says it was his "last day" at the RR. The photo is a still from season 1 and it was actually the first day he started working there after getting out of prison.

So these, along with Johnny Horne's age, and the major problem with Annie's age, are starting to not really look like they were intentionally changed to suit some kind of weird N-dimensional time shifts in TP. They look like a guy who can't remember what the fuck happened in the original series that he himself wrote! For me it's just about unforgivable that with material like this he would trust his memory and not fact-check it for himself which would take all of an hour.

There's alot of really ham-handed prose and exposition in TFD which frankly I never liked. It was neat to get some expansion there and certainly to find out more about the engimatic Judy, but it reads like something he wrote over a weekend and completely lacks nuance and mystery. It's artless and kind of embarrassing, especially employing a character's speculative thought as a facile device for expose over and over again.

Looking over transcripts from interviews with Sabrina Sutherland, she says Lynch had exactly zero to do with it and hadn't even read it. He certainly didn't sign off on it and the book shows no kind of collaboration or respect for Lynch's material so that really dissapoints me. At this point I reject it as canon because the contradictions are too many and too serious.

For me at least I have had to change my thinking about linear time to get my head around alot of the material. Because it is clear (to me) that he is operating in a 10-dimenstional universe (at least), there are other worlds that are detached from how we measure time. But the space is the same. I believe this is why in the original series the Tremonds appear in the house that Donna serves and then afterwards have vanished. She had shifted into another dimension when she saw the Grandmother and the boy.

There are also several references to "Mother" or Mom in the original Twin Peaks seasons. One of them being when Philip Gerard starts crying after being questioned about what the tattoo on his arm said ("Mom!!!!!!!!").

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GkA5IT4baQ

It's interesting what you wrote about History being over in your conclusion. In a very real sense, it is; from fashion to pop culture to the media we can access instantly on Spotify, Netflix etc, there has never been such a constant blend of now and then. Everything is up for grabs, everything is available. And in another sense, with social media, everything seems to be focused on capturing one big NOW: what are you doing NOW? What are you watching NOW? A strange time to be alive.

Another thing your article prompted me on; I hadn't really considered in depth before how much The Return reduces BoB's role in the grand scheme of things, just as sharply as the 2nd season increased his importance. He really is just a symptom in The Return, a dangerous one, but certainly only the tip of the ice berg in some ways.