With its interracial romance and time-traveling plot, Singer's latest (after A Prayer for Dawn)
bears a superficial resemblance to Octavia E. Butler's Kindred
. But this lighter novel, a blend of romance, historical fiction, action and sci-fi, sends a white man back in time and reflects his youthful, colloquial voice. Told from alternating points of view, the novel opens with the story of Eli Cooper, a 27-year-old painter living in New York City in 2001, who finds himself, immediately after the death of his African-American wife, Jessie, stranded in Mississippi in 1938. He works baling hay with a "crew of Black folks," all the while charting his observations in a journal (and paying homage to various delta blues musicians). But the appearance of Ella, who looks remarkably like Jessie, further complicates matters. She, too, keeps a diary in which she confides an uncomfortable attraction to the new stranger in town. This obstacle-ridden love story takes an unexpected turn with the introduction of Jerome Kinnae, a "time walker" who holds the key to reuniting Eli and Ella in the present. Though the novel never feels very harrowing despite the dangers the couple face, Singer's freewheeling prose style moves the story at a brisk pace. (Feb.)
