Burning Road

From the bestselling author of The Plague Tales comes a spellbinding new novel that sweeps from medieval France to America in the year 2007—interweaving two gripping stories and two extraordinary eras....

In fourteenth-century France, pockets of plague still bring death to peasants and noblemen alike. Amid the fury and the chaos, Dr. Alejandro Canches searches for a safe haven, accompanied by his foster child, Kate—the illegitimate daughter of Edward Plantagenet. But both disease and human enemies pursue them, and their only hope for survival is a rebel leader... and medical secrets that lie hidden in an ancient manuscript.

Seven hundred years later, Dr. Janie Crowe is searching for the cure for a crippling disease in a world where genetic engineering has gone mad. A repressive government wants to stop her, unnamed benefactors want to help her, and time is running out to find answers linking two dark eras, two dedicated doctors, and one miraculous book....

Ann Benson's debut novel, The Plague Tales, was acclaimed by critics and embraced by readers, who have made it an ongoing national bestseller. Now she has written a spellbinding new novel that sweeps from fourteenth-century France to America in the year 2007 -- interweaving two gripping stories and two extraordinary eras. In this brilliantly imagined work of fiction, the author revisits the lives of two of her characters, physicians who are separated by centuries but united in their quest to uncover medicine's deepest secrets.

In fourteenth-century France, a nation is still reeling from its loss to the English at Poitiers, one of the bloodiest battles of the Hundred Years' War. Pockets of plague still dot the countryside as physician Alejandro Canches struggles to make his way to safety, accompanied by his foster child, Kate -- the illegitimate daughter of Edward Plantagenet. Enter Guillaume Karle, an educated member of France's rising bourgeoisie, who takes a shine to Kate, and becomes her protector when she and Alejandro are separated. Their struggle to reunite, stymied by circumstance and history, leaves both their fates hanging in the balance.

Nearly seven hundred years later, in the year 2007, Janie Crowe -- surgeon, scientist, dedicated historian -- finds herself drawn into the intrigue of an unexplained and debilitating genetic disease. Enlisted by a mysterious young woman to help unlock its secrets, she seeks the wisdom of an ancient text for guidance against this terrible scourge, risking her future and her life for the sake of a greater good.

Skillfully weaving the strands of these two gripping stories, interlaced with characters historic and imagined, Ann Benson has written a fascinating historical thriller that is also an intricate journey into the mysterious secrets of science: engrossing, thought-provoking, compulsively readable.

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.

Ann Benson lives in Connecticut with her husband and is the mother of two grown daughters. She is also the author of the acclaimed novels The Plague Tales, The Burning Road, and Thief of Souls.