THE PHYSICIAN’S TALE

The story of two plague-fighting physicians separated by centuries—medieval Spaniard Alejandro Canches and modern-day doctor Janie Crowe—continues in the concluding volume of Benson's trilogy (The Burning Road, 1999, etc.).

Janie Crowe and husband Tom Macalester form in Massachusetts one of the few colonies of escapees from the devastating plague DR SAM, a deadly bacterium from Mexico that has decimated the world over the past eight years. Janie has in her possession the precious journal once belonging to the 15th-century physician at Windsor Castle, Alejandro Canches, who helped battle the original bubonic plague in Europe. Janie is convinced his journal reveals the psychic correspondence between that earlier age and the present; indeed, her son, Alex, has been scientifically conjured (by “nuclear transference”) from the genes of the ancestral physician Alejandro. While Tom and fellow explorers gather specimens and information on survivors outside the compound, the story cuts alternately to the Jewish ghetto of Avignon where Alejandro has been living in secret with his foster daughter Kate's son, Guillaume—Kate is actually the bastard daughter of King Edward III, while her son is the product of her brief marriage to now-deceased rebel Guillaume Karle. Alejandro and young Guillaume are summoned suddenly by Alejandro's old mentor, the surgeon Guy de Chauliac, on the shattering news that the vengeful English king, writing to the pope via his young secretary Geoffrey Chaucer, has decided to legitimize Kate as his daughter and marry her for political benefits to the loathsome de Coucy clan, murderers of Kate's late husband. De Chauliac's plan is for Alejandro to rescue Kate from Windsor Palace and reunite her with her fugitive son. All the while, Kate is plotting her own escape with the help of smitten scribe Chaucer. Back in the present, Janie and Tom encounter rogue groups of survivors in need of medical attention from Janie, and everyone has a sad secret to reveal.

Absorbing, utterly plausible post-apocalyptic fiction by an imaginative writer.