LOVE, LOSS, AND HONOR

In Wiens’ fantasy sequel, a widow’s long-lost love—from more than 400 years ago—rejoins her in the present day by inhabiting another man’s body.

After someone pushed her off a cliff, nurse practitioner Karen Schmidt spent a month in a coma. During that time, she seemingly hallucinated a journey to 16th-century Antwerp, where she fell in love with blacksmith Pieter Smid. When she finally awakened, her life quickly turned tragic, as her soldier husband, Peter, died in combat. Though devastated, Karen and her two children try to move on, and she opens a medical clinic with her doctor friend, Josie Bennett, in the Palouse, a region encompassing several state borders in the Pacific Northwest. But Charlie Walden, a veteran living on the street, flusters her when he suddenly insists that he’s Pieter. Despite his deep knowledge of Karen’s days in Antwerp, she doesn’t buy his claims. Pieter, whose consciousness is, in fact, in Charlie’s body, settles into his new identity and finds a job as a ranch hand. Along the way, he struggles to adjust to the faster pace of the modern world. It’s not long, however, before his and Karen’s paths cross again, and they get a chance to rediscover the love they once shared. Wiens’ follow-up plants itself solidly in the modern day, abandoning the first installment’s tendency to shift into different time periods. This begets a slower narrative, but it enriches the focus on the main characters as well. Karen, for example, is shown to suffer PTSD–like symptoms due to losing her spouse and surviving an attempted murder. Charlie’s attempts to adapt to the 21st century result in welcome moments of humor, as he steers clear of what he sees as breakneck “self-propelled metal carriages” and despises the addictive “talking picture box.” The understated romance makes this sequel considerably less grim than its predecessor, which was set during murderous witch trials; nevertheless, there is one particularly gruesome turn. Wiens ends this sequel with a satisfying resolution and even ties off a lingering subplot from the first book.

A quietly engaging time-travel love story.