Dreamers of the Day

You won't really understand your times until you understand mine, says Agnes, a 40-year-old schoolteacher from Ohio, who speaks from the afterlife as she looks back at her first trip to Egypt in 1921. Narrator Ann Marie Lee's cheerful, friendly tones help listeners suspend disbelief when the dÄclassÄe Agnes is welcomed into the rarified world of T. E. Lawrence, Winston Churchill, and other dignitaries. Relying heavily on coincidence, the story depicts Agnes as privy to the intricate events of the Cairo Peace Conference, which created the nations of Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, and Syria, and ostensibly, our current problems in the Middle East. Lee is ingenuous and chirpy as Agnes spends her days with Lawrence and the Churchills and her nights with Karl, a German spy. Lee makes the listening easy, but the book is a stretch. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

November 5, 2007
Russell's enjoyable latest historical is told in the exuberant, posthumous voice (yes, it's narrated from the afterlife) of Agnes Shanklin, a 38-year-old schoolteacher from Cedar Glen, a town near Cleveland, Ohio. After the influenza epidemic of 1919 strikes down Agnes's family, a childless and unmarried Agnes settles the family estate, acquires financial independence and adopts an affable dachshund named Rosie. Accompanied by Rosie, Agnes travels to Cairo during the Cairo Peace Conference, where she befriends Winston Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia among other historical heavy hitters. She also falls in love with the charismatic Karl Weilbacher, a German spy whose interest in Agnes may have less to do with romance than Agnes will allow herself to believe. Agnes's travelogues, while marvelously detailed, distract from the increasingly tense romantic play between Agnes and Karl. When a more worldly-wise Agnes returns home, her life—first as an investor wrecked by the Depression and then a librarian until her death in 1957—remains low-keyed. Though the bizarre, whimsical ending doesn't quite gel, Russell (The Sparrow
; A Thread of Grace
) has created an instantly likable heroine whose unlikely adventures will keep readers hooked to the end.

Agnes Shanklin, the spinster at the center of this historical novel, narrates her own story from the afterlife. A schoolteacher who lost her family to influenza in 1919, Agnes acquires financial independence and decides to travel--to Egypt precisely, where she meets various important people of the period, such a T.E. Lawrence and Churchill. As a character, Agnes is both comic and pitiable, an effect that is hard for a narrator to achieve. Ann Marie Lee's careful delivery manages to capture both. The multiple imagined voices that intrude upon Agnes comprise an interior monologue of female voices that Lee carries off to great effect. A slight difficulty is the accent used for the German characters, which does not ring true. Overall though, Lee keeps the listener in tune with the narrative. M.R. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine