“The Story Can Now Be Told”

I started reading and was somewhat interested. Megan Edwards’ style has a great way of including details that make every scene seem authentic.

The book is big (at 544 pages), but the chapters are short which I personally love. (I can start and stop reading as a chapter ends and then pick up the book and not feel “lost.”) The more I read, the more interested I got.

Edwards tells the story of a team of scientists who discover a way to make time travel possible. After initial successful time travel experiments, they are determined to bring Julius Caesar to life in 1999 for a four day stay at a covert lab in Pasadena, California. The writing makes the pursuit of the past seem so natural that it is quite believable. Also the book’s characters are easy-to-track. I don’t know about you, but when a book features too many characters doing too many things…the story gets lost. This story keeps the reader involved.

Although Julius Caesar is in the first chapter, he doesn’t physically enter the current-day narrative until well into the book. Already in the book I had learned a good deal about him. (I hadn’t studied early Roman history…at all.) As it turns out, however, Julius Caesar is alive in 1999 and is the object of an attempted kidnapping. The book takes a dramatic turn. A young female member of the scientific team, Cassandra Fleury, and Caesar flee to escape the kidnappers and time is of the essence. Where do Cassandra and Cesar spend a good deal of their hiding time? Yep, Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

I know that sounds kind of hokey, but trust me, the story is so compelling that the Caesars Palace site works well. In fact, I sat reading the last third of the book so avidly that I even forgot all about a local homeowners meeting where I am the non-Board-member secretary! (Fortunately, I can write my minutes from a tape recording of the meeting.)

Despite some early misgivings about the premise of the book, I do recommend A Coin for the Ferryman. It’s a darn good story.

You can read more about this book and see the extensive list of endorsers from the world here. Click on the Praise for the Book tab.