RUNAWAY TIME

by Deborah Gordon

Avon, ISBN 0-380-77759-2, 1995, 404pp, US$5.50

A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper

Copyright 1996 Evelyn C. Leeper

Sara Maravich goes back from our future to 1865 to try to save Lincoln. She arrives late, however, and instead falls in love with Tyson Stone (a.k.a. Thomas Jefferson Reid). This is basically a historical romance; the alternate history aspect is dealt with mainly by people from the future returning to the past and talking about it. (Apparently, anyone who sees a time traveler go back remembers both the "original" future and the changed one.)

There was one glaring anachronism: Reid talks about Maravich sleeping like a vampire in the daytime. While there was some notion of vampires at that time, the concept did not achieve widespread popularity until after Bram Stoker wrote DRACULA at the end of the century.

The two alternate history romances I reviewed earlier at least had the virtue of showing the reader a changed world. (One was Maura Seger's PERCHANCE TO DREAM, in which the Confederacy wins the Civil War; the other was Seger's FORTUNE'S TIDE, in which the American Revolution fails.) This one is just a time-travel romance set in the post-Civil War period with a few references to possible changes somewhere down the line, and is not recommended for alternate history fans.

%T      Runaway Time
%A      Deborah Gordon
%C      New York
%D      October 1995
%I      Avon
%O      paperback, US$5.50
%G      ISBN 0-380-77759-2
%P      404pp

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