The Far Reach of Yesterday
This time-slip novel asks the reader to accept a great deal—while making it clear that Rachel Winston must accept at least twice as much. A successful young attorney representing a client under threat from a Chicago crime family, she lands in the hospital with a head injury so severe that an induced coma follows. But for Rachel, the trauma causes a time slip to 1864 Boise, where gold mining, Civil War antipathies, and harsh frontier violence and conditions call on her for kinds of courage (and skills!) her legal career never demanded.
An independent and isolated person in her “modern” legal life, Rachel, in this Western adventure, must accept family love for the first time, form multiple deep friendships, and enter, at last, a romance with a wounded Union cavalry officer. Passionate and romantic though her new life is, could it be real? Has she fallen back in time to the days that her grandfather’s family heirloom, a nine-foot leather bullwhip, dates to?
By the time the plot reveals how the time slip took place, and why, Rachel has just about everything to lose, so that the final chapters of this imaginative novel are its most suspenseful. Despite the challenging opening premise, Bender’s frontier tale is engrossing and rich with period detail. Because the speech habits of the characters don’t change with the time slip, there’s a burden of disconnect in the conversations. But seasoned with a generous dash of extra suspension of skepticism, Rachel’s deepening and growth take root in a stirring adventure with highly enjoyable romance at its core.
