From Amazon.com
Readers of Ann Benson's bestselling
The Plague Tales will bond immediately with this sequel and its unusual blend of historical romance and futuristic medical thriller. The book begins in 14th-century France--a country ravished by a war with the English, and also suffering from the deadly effects of the plague. A Spanish-Jewish physician named Alejandro Canches searches for a cure; he scribes a medical manuscript along the way.
The Burning Road then moves to a town in Massachusetts in the year 2007, where another Doctor, Janie Crowe is fighting her own battle to cure sickness and disease. She looks to Canches's manuscript, his "Book of Cures," for clues.
Benson skillfully shows us the small details of everyday life and the events that both connect and separate these two doctors as they struggle with medical and personal problems. Canches seems to have isolated the cause of the bubonic plague, but his work is interrupted by battles with French troops and by worries about the safety of his foster daughter Kate (who is the illegitimate daughter of England's King Edward III). Meanwhile, Dr. Crowe is on the verge of a major breakthrough with a terrible genetic disease that afflicts Jewish boys.
The alchemy and magic may not be for every taste, but by linking her two physicians through 600 years of what passes for progress, Benson gives her strange hybrid a uniquely gripping aura. --Dick Adler
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Boldly conceived as two parallel fictional journeys separated by 650 years and linked by an ancient, mysterious manuscript promising miraculous cures, Benson's sequel to The Plague Tales aims to please historical romance readers as well as futuristic thrill-seekers, but suffers from this risky hybridization. The love story set in the 14th century fares best. While crypto-Jewish physician Alejandro Canches becomes involved in a peasants' revolt in France during the savage Hundred Years' War, his foster daughter Kate, illegitimate child of England's Edward III, falls in love with rebel leader Guillaume Karle. In Benson's less successful alternative tale, a medico-techno-thriller, Janie Crowe is a brilliant neurologist discredited in the aftermath of DR SAM, the incurable staph infection that recently ravaged the world and now, in 2007, is recurring. Crowe seeks a genetic cure for an eerie disease afflicting Jewish boys while juggling romance with two hunky-but-sensitive suitors. Linked to Alejandro by his book of cures, which has recently come into her hands, 40-ish Janie "smirks" and "snickers" at the wisdom found there; her disdain renders the uneasily intertwined plots of mystic healing and medical science implausible. Benson's medieval tale and its colorful characters, like a boyish Geoffrey Chaucer, are far more intriguingly drawn than her watered-down 21st-century cynics. But even the narrative set in ancient times flourishes its own unpersuasive details, such as an impossibly glorified earth-mother pregnancy and inconsistent dialogue. Perhaps these two stories would have been more successful as separate vehicles. Author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
