Finding Jane

Conte debuts with a lavish time-travel story involving a modern woman confronting 19th-century sensibilities. In 2013, Jane Reynolds is reeling from the sudden breakup with her boyfriend of seven years. She struggles to concentrate on her job as exhibit director for the Los Angeles County Museum, and is grateful for a trip to London to collaborate with the British Museum, hoping it will take her mind off her failed love life. In London, she stops at a vintage bookstore, where a psychic tells her she will go on a journey to revitalize her soul, but warns that if she stays too long, she will never return. While walking through the woods around Eaton Manor, where she is meant to identify a collection of historical clothing, Jane falls from a dizzy spell, then wakes up naked and in the care of Henry Eaton, master of Eaton Estate, in 1833. She remembers what a friend once told her: “Don’t lose yourself because of love. Find yourself because of it.” Luckily, the handsome Henry Eaton makes following that advice easy. With Jane, Conte has crafted an intelligent if sometimes emotionally needy heroine, and she does a good job showing how Jane learns to live and love in a strange new world. Women’s fiction fans will enjoy this. (Self-published)