The Burning Road

Boldly conceived as two parallel fictional journeys separated by 650 years and linked by an ancient, mysterious manuscript promising miraculous cures, Benson's sequel to The Plague Tales aims to please historical romance readers as well as futuristic thrill-seekers, but suffers from this risky hybridization. The love story set in the 14th century fares best. While crypto-Jewish physician Alejandro Canches becomes involved in a peasants' revolt in France during the savage Hundred Years' War, his foster daughter Kate, illegitimate child of England's Edward III, falls in love with rebel leader Guillaume Karle. In Benson's less successful alternative tale, a medico-techno-thriller, Janie Crowe is a brilliant neurologist discredited in the aftermath of DR SAM, the incurable staph infection that recently ravaged the world and now, in 2007, is recurring. Crowe seeks a genetic cure for an eerie disease afflicting Jewish boys while juggling romance with two hunky-but-sensitive suitors. Linked to Alejandro by his book of cures, which has recently come into her hands, 40-ish Janie ""smirks"" and ""snickers"" at the wisdom found there; her disdain renders the uneasily intertwined plots of mystic healing and medical science implausible. Benson's medieval tale and its colorful characters, like a boyish Geoffrey Chaucer, are far more intriguingly drawn than her watered-down 21st-century cynics. But even the narrative set in ancient times flourishes its own unpersuasive details, such as an impossibly glorified earth-mother pregnancy and inconsistent dialogue. Perhaps these two stories would have been more successful as separate vehicles. Author tour. (Apr.)