~A Love Through Time~

by Carolyn Rose

      Heroine:  Everywoman (minimal physical description)

     The story begins with heroine Peg Malone journeying through Germany to make peace with her part-Aryan heritage, as well as her grandfather's recent death.  She is swept back through the years and finds herself lost and alone in the war-torn countryside.  She makes her way to a farmhouse and discovers a gravely-wounded Nazi deserter within its walls.  Her nurse's sense of duty to help all others compels her to save his life, all the while trying to squelch thoughts that this man could easily have been one of the soldiers who captured her grandfather and held him prisoner during his time fighting there as a German-born American soldier.  

     Despite their suspicions of each other and the secrets they both hide, Peg and Thomas find they need each other to in order to survive in the ravaged countryside and to avoid being caught by the S.S. which is now searching for the young man,  who ran away from his paratrooper unit after losing his fiancee in an air raid.  The novel chronicles the pair's experiences as they wander from town to town trying to find the impossible: a safe place to live.  The mystery of Peg's arrival in the past is finally revealed to her and she is faced with choosing between returning to a safe life in the future . . . without Thomas, or remaining in the past with him, where she has little chance of any future at all.

      What worked for me:

       I always enjoy time-travel stories and although most of those I read send the protagonist further back into history, I must say I found the setting of Nazi-controlled Germany refreshing and that the story's plot had some interesting twists to it.  The only other book I have read recently set in that era was a mainstream novel, Remarque's "A Time to Love, A Time to Die," which obviously didn't have the happy ending normally associated with a romance story as "A Love Through Time" did.

       What didn't work for me:

     The condensed time-line and some of the plot points bothered me a bit.  I won't lay them out here and spoil the story, but I WILL say that if my husband turned around and fell in love just a few months after I died, I'd be back to haunt him over it.  For sure! 

Overall:

    An intriguing and suspenseful story. If you enjoy time-travel romances or have an interest in the lives of ordinary Germans during World War II, it's worth a look. :^) 

If you liked "A Love Through Time" you might also enjoy "Somewhere in Time", "Sixpence Bride", or "Say You're Mine".

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