Caroline B. Cooney is the author of "Goddess of Yesterday" (an ALA Notable Children's Book); "The Ransom of Mercy Carter"; and "The Face on the Milk Carton" (an IRA-CBC Children's Choice). She lives in Westbrook, CT.
Gr 8-10‘This sequel to Both Sides of Time (Delacorte, 1995) fails as both a romance and a time-travel story. Anna Sophia Lockwood once again slips back in time to be with her love, Hiram Stratton, Jr. She arrives only to find Strat's sister in the clutches of the nefarious Walker Walkley; Strat locked up in an insane asylum because of her (and the large fortune Walkley wants to get his mitts on); and Strat's fiancée, Harriet, dying of TB in an Adirondack sanitarium. Annie rescues Strat, takes him to Harriet in time for her last breath, and then sends him along his way before being kidnapped by Walkley. In the end, of course, she ends up back in her own time, better able to deal with the turbulence within her family. The time-travel device seems to exist in order to give Cooney a soap box from which to moralize on the plight of women in the late 19th century, and it stands out from the narrative like a sore thumb. Even the romance flops. The same young man who spends a wakeful night at Annie's side, watching her sleep and twining her hair through his fingers, forgets about her completely when he sees Harriet. Cooney tries several times to work in the turmoil in Annie's family, but it comes off as forced as the young woman's endless musings about the perfection of Strat's love. They are a tiresome pair of lovers, caught in a tiresome story. For more successful time-travel romance, try Jack Finney's Time and Again (S.&S., 1986) or Eileen Dunlop's Elizabeth Elizabeth (Holt, 1977; o.p.).‘Patricia A. Dollisch, DeKalb County Public Library, Decatur, GA
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