Now & Then

May 18, 2009
In Sheehan’s spellbinding latest (after Lost & Found
), former lawyer Anna O’Shea becomes a time-traveling ex-wife when she returns from a vacation in Ireland and is enlisted to pick up her brother Patrick’s son from jail in Newark after Patrick is severely injured in a car accident. Anna retrieves troublesome 16-year-old Joe and sets him up at her home, then wakes in the middle of the night to find him rummaging through her luggage. Joe’s intrigued by a mysterious swath of cloth Anna picked up at a tourist trap, and when she tries to take it from him, the two are zapped back 164 years to pre–potato famine Ireland. Sheehan vividly depicts Irish-British conflicts as Anna becomes involved with an Irish smuggler’s group and falls for a rebel cartographer. Equally compelling is Joe’s experience as a wrestling champ and his romance with sparky lass Taleen. Throw in loyal Irish wolfhound Madigan, and you’ve got an altogether enjoyable romantic adventure yarn with a heavy helping of magic.

June 1, 2009
Just home from a trip, Massachusetts-based Anna must pick up her 16-year-old nephew, Joseph, from a New Jersey jail. As Anna tussles with Joseph over a package in her luggage, the two are hurled back to 1844 Ireland. Anna falls in with Glenis and her blacksmith husband, Tom, and Joseph becomes a prodigy fawned on by the area's wealthy British landowner. Here in the land of their ancestors, Joseph, always at odds with his widower father, and recently divorced Anna manage to find the love and respect missing from their 21st-century lives. Will they ever get back home? Do they truly want to? VERDICT Sheehan ("Lost & Found") basically transforms a contemporary novel into a historical one, with all the period detail and sense of place for which such works are judged and appreciated. She reminds us that those who came before were no less savvy in their time than we like to think of ourselves today and that by accepting the past, we might just change the future. For readers looking for a well-written story with just a touch of blarney.Bette-Lee Fox, "Library Journal"

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