LOVE, LOSS, AND HONOR

Two love stories set in different eras collide in this debut novel.

In 1997, American college freshman Karen Mary Williams won’t let anything sidetrack her goal of becoming a doctor. She can have an active social life and still study faithfully. But when Karen gets pregnant, her nerdish “study buddy” and maybe boyfriend, Peter Schmidt, offers to marry her. As the years pass, she concentrates on her new family even if it puts the brakes on her professional drive. Although she loves Peter, Karen may succumb to her sexual desire when reuniting with the rich pre-med student she dated back in college. In a concurrent plot, a woman awakens in an alley in 16th-century Antwerp. As she can’t remember who she is or how she got there, she goes by Mariken, a name courtesy of a kindhearted seamstress she befriends. But Mariken is definitely a physician, a skill she uses to help others. She falls in love with a humble blacksmith and rejects the advances of an arrogant banker. But living in an era when people are executed for heresy, Mariken is one of many women wrongfully accused of and tried for witchcraft. Wiens simplifies his dual plot narrative by focusing on one story at a time before tying them together in the present day. The swiftly paced novel fluidly moves through years with the married couple as well as Mariken’s fraught, centuries-old medical procedures. The tale also features real-life historical figures and events. The book is often grim, with the imprisoned women’s horrid treatment and a minor present-day serial-killer subplot that pays off by the end. The love stories, meanwhile, are enthralling and realistic; for example, Karen and Peter’s mutual fondness doesn’t mean they don’t bicker. While the plot-linking final act satisfies, the author drops enough hints throughout Mariken’s tale that many readers will have already made the connections.

Parallel characters and melodramatic tales that prove somber but absorbing.