Premonitions hints at past lives and common experiences, as it draws subtle connections between people on their personal quests for adventure, love and family. Amelia Rothman, a foreign-rights editor from New York, has a turbulent personal life. Adele Durand, a young French woman, marries the wrong man in 18th century revolutionary France. What do these two women have in common? Is it possible … that an apprentice medicine-man in 15th century Africa and an ancient sword hold the answers to a question which transcends time itself? Premonitions in the second book in the Recognitions trilogy.
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We approach this story on three different timelines. Whether or not these lines of time are peopled by the same souls is entirely up to us, the readers.
We encounter the witch-doctor of a small West African village in 1577. Childless himself, he takes on the training of the son of the local mute woman. From a young age, he trains this young man in the ways of a sixteenth-century community medicine man.
Amelia is the divorced mother of two teenagers in New York City in 2018. Her daughter Jen is deeply into fencing. Amelia, an author, has consulted a hypnotherapist concerning her problems with insomnia, anxieties and the weird, intense feelings of deja vu she experienced while in France a little over a month ago. Amelia is perhaps also getting deeply into fencing instructor Noah. Until ex-husband Don talks his way back into the family, that is.
Adele is 18, living in Gex, France in 1776. She has been courted by the local school teacher, Jules, who has her heart, but also lately she has been pursued by the son of a wealthy local shopkeeper, Pierre who promises her travel and Paris in time. Because her family prefers it and her friends encourage it, she decides to marry Pierre. They have two children together, but Adele is stifled in her confining life of wife and mother. Pierre will not allow her to work, even in the family-owned store, and they have never been out of the township of Gex. Her mother councils patience and gratitude for the life she has been gifted with.
We alternate between these three timelines, these three locales and cover many years, seeing these worlds through other eyes.
We see through the eyes of our in-training Medicine man as white slavers kidnap or murder all the young men of the village, the Witch Doctor and some of the women and girls, as well. The slavers leave behind only a shiny long pointed instrument of unknown purpose.
We look through the Eyes of Amelia as she talks Noah into a trip to modern France with her, to see if he too is haunted by the little city of Gex and the old parts of Paris.
And we see through the eyes of Adele, as she runs away with her schoolteacher Jules, now a fully qualified maitre-d’armes, once her children are grown, seeing Gux and Paris as it was during the French revolution.
What does it all mean? Do we believe in coincidence? Premonition? This book is the second of a trilogy but completely stand alone. I will be looking for the other two, to have the whole of the story in my hands.
I received a free electronic copy of this interesting novel from Netgalley, Daniela I Norris, and Roundfire Books. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this book of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work.