I won this book when Howard Books was doing a giveaway. They let me choose two from a list, and boy am I glad this was one of the two! The premise is intriguing; a young doctor haunted by the mysterious disappearance of her mother when she was a child, makes a tragic error that leaves her guilt-ridden and doubting herself. After receiving a strange letter from her father, who believes he has seen her mother, Lisbeth Hastings travels to the dig site where it all happened. There, she touches a cave painting and falls into a cistern, waking up back in 3rd century Carthage. (near what is now Tunis). She winds up in a slave market, purchased by a man whose recent secret conversion to Christianity motivates him to save slaves from being purchased by less savory individuals.
As it turns out, she may have arrived for "such a time as this" - not only is a mysterious epidemic sweeping the city, but her master, Cyprian Thascius, is in need of a wife to further his goals of helping to change the society he lives in for the better. Furthermore, the simple faith and loving kindness demonstrated to her by the Christians she meets are starting to change her impressions of God, too. And just when you thought it couldn't get any more interesting, guess who rematerializes, bent on a mission to bring down an evil man?
Healer Of Carthage is rich with details of actual history and tantalizing what-ifs; what if God bent time and space to bring about His will? What if we literally can get second chances to fix our mistakes? What if love is possible unconfined by linear time? I'm looking forward to the second book in The Carthage Chronicles, Return to Exile already. You will fall in love with some characters and despise others, but most of all, you will applaud the bravery of our noble protagonists. Healer Of Carthage is the beginning of a heart-pounding adventure that promises to get even better.