I checked my shelf in hopes of rereading this medical suspense novel that I read 23 years ago when it first came out, but alas it must be on “permanent loan”. I know I wouldn’t have given it away, it was that entertaining. I’m a slow reader, easily distracted, but Ann Benson’s 1997 best-seller didn’t feel like the long read that it is, anywhere from 475 to over 600 pages, depending on the edition. Part historical fiction, part science fiction, part medical mystery, the story enthralled me from the start.
Picture an antiseptic near-future of ruthless Medicops (2005, in Benson’s timeline) where doctors are so expendable that a surgeon has to turn to forensic archaeology for a new career. Dr. Janie Crowe didn’t know she was digging up the Black Death along with that black soil sample from London. The lab assistant didn’t realize it was infected and wasn’t aware she’d transmitted it to herself and others. The world didn’t see it coming, and suddenly the Bubonic Plague gallops across America with alarming speed in a crisis that has become alarmingly familiar. Now picture a Medieval doctor, a Jew on the run from the Spanish Inquisition. He travels through France to England during the worst of the pestilence to wind up at the court of King Edward III where he alone understands the power of quarantine and records his efforts in a crumbling book that awaits rediscovery with a biological gift to cure the future.
My only qualm with the story is a little sagging speculation near the end, but this is still what I want to be rereading right now—so much so that I might even buy it anew.