The Burning Road - Hardcover

Benson, Ann

3.97

719 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385332890 ISBN 13: 9780385332897

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1999

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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.

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Review:

Readers of Ann Benson's bestselling The Plague Tales will bond immediately with this sequel and its unusual blend of historical romance and futuristic medical thriller. The book begins in 14th-century France--a country ravished by a war with the English, and also suffering from the deadly effects of the plague. A Spanish-Jewish physician named Alejandro Canches searches for a cure; he scribes a medical manuscript along the way.

The Burning Road then moves to a town in Massachusetts in the year 2007, where another Doctor, Janie Crowe is fighting her own battle to cure sickness and disease. She looks to Canches's manuscript, his "Book of Cures," for clues.

Benson skillfully shows us the small details of everyday life and the events that both connect and separate these two doctors as they struggle with medical and personal problems. Canches seems to have isolated the cause of the bubonic plague, but his work is interrupted by battles with French troops and by worries about the safety of his foster daughter Kate (who is the illegitimate daughter of England's King Edward III). Meanwhile, Dr. Crowe is on the verge of a major breakthrough with a terrible genetic disease that afflicts Jewish boys.

The alchemy and magic may not be for every taste, but by linking her two physicians through 600 years of what passes for progress, Benson gives her strange hybrid a uniquely gripping aura. --Dick Adler

From the Back Cover:

Praise for The Plague Tales:

"[A] cleverly narrated saga...chock full of curious lore and considerable suspense."
--Entertainment Weekly

"First-novelist Benson reveals a formidable talent as she blends historical fiction with a near-future biothriller."
--Publishers Weekly

"A carefully woven page-turner from which veterans like Robin Cook and Michael Crichton could learn... Readers of books like Richard Preston's The Hot Zone will devour this fictional equivalent."
--Library Journal

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