The Physician's Tale

September 25, 2006
At the start of Benson's stirring fourth thriller to interweave past and near future (after 2002's The Thief of Souls
), a bioterror attack by a cabal of fundamentalists known as the Coalition has decimated the U.S., and scattered bands of survivors struggle to keep going. The action then shifts from 21st-century America to 14th-century Europe, where the black death continues to ravage England and France. In both periods, Benson illuminates the challenges, physical and moral, that disease poses to her heroes—Dr. Janie Crowe in the near future, and Dr. Alejandro Canches in the past—as they each attempt to protect their loved ones and stay true to their professional ethics. While the plot twist connecting the two eras may strike some as a bit much, readers will be pleasantly reminded of similar works by P.D. James and John Christopher.

October 15, 2006
In her ambitious 1997 debut, " The Plague Tales," Benson rendered intriguing parallel narratives--one set in twenty-first-century America in the wake of a global epidemic, the other in Europe during the plague-ridden era of King Edward III's reign. Each tale revolved around a physician who displayed courage and intelligence in the face of devastation and disease. In this compelling, if uneven, third installment (after" The Burning Road," 1999), Benson's protagonists face a new slew of challenges and threats. Doctor Janie Crowe and her husband, Tom, unite with a scattering of survivors in a modern world nearly decimated by a bacteriological attack. Some seven centuries earlier, Jewish physician Alejandro Canches heals the sick and conspires in the escape of King Edward's illegitimate daughter, Kate, who Canches once rescued and raised as his own. What yokes the two plots are the secrets housed in Doctor Canches' medical journal--now in Janie's possession. Benson's apocalyptic scenario is much overshadowed by her fourteenth-century yarn, which features romance, intrigue, and a lively role for poet Geoffrey Chaucer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)