The Plague Tales

Starred review from April 28, 1997
First-novelist Benson reveals a formidable talent as she blends historical fiction with a near-future bio-thriller. One strand of this novel loops through 14th-century Europe during the onslaught of the bubonic plague. The other runs through the year 2005, as the world is recovering from a global disaster called The Outbreaks. The latter tale features Janie Crowe, an American who has lost her entire family in the Outbreaks. A former surgeon, the 40-ish Crowe is forced by post-Outbreak legislation to "retrain" as a forensic archeology. While gathering soil samples in England, Crowe unwittingly unearths a piece of cloth that contains a bacterium that threatens the U.K. with a new strain of bubonic plague. The 14th-century tale, meanwhile, chronicles the journeys of Alejandro, a persecuted young Jewish physician whose banishment from his native Spain forces him to change his identity and eventually brings him to the court of England's King Edward. There he falls in love with the beautiful companion of the spoiled and capricious Princess Isabella, even as he searches for the cause and cure of the Black Death. Benson renders both eras and their characters in vivid detail and ties the two stories together with parallel plot elements and a unifying artifact--the young physician's notebook. While stronger as a historical than as a futuristic medical thriller, Benson's debut is assured and accomplished in both the past and the present.