The Burning Road

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 haswritten a fascinating historical thriller that is also an intricate journey into the mysterious secrets of science: engrossing, thought-provoking, compulsively readable.