Ferney

Combining the spellbinding time travel of Jack Finney's Time and Again and the sweeping passion of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, here is a haunting and enchanting novel that captures the magic of the ineffable sense that we have lived and loved before...

It was an accidental detour inspired by one of Gally's frequent panic attacks that sent her husband Mike down a twisting, lane to the abandoned cottage.  Yet from the moment she saw it, Gally felt a peace she hadn't known in years and the inexplicable sense that she had finally come home.

And so she had.

For as Mike worries and fusses over their new home's restoration, it is Gally who seems to know exactly how it should look. Indeed, Gally seems to flourish in the tiny village of Penselwood, deep in the Somerset countryside. But the greatest mystery of all is her growing and unexpectedly intimate relationship with an irascible eighty-three-year-old countryman named Ferney.

Not even Gally herself can explain the bond between them--or how Ferney seems to know her better than she knows herself. Yet through Ferney's old stories Gally finds herself transported down hazy pathways to a past unrecorded in any history book: a magnificent sweep of time and events when the woods were alive with thundering hooves, peasants and soldiers, bloodshed and bravery, and two tragic young lovers who made a vow even death could not break.

Now, as the days slip away, Gally begins to understand her connection to Ferney: a bond wrought of many meetings and many partings. And as this short, bittersweet rendezvous draws to a close, she must face a life-and-death dilemma that has followed them down the centuries to one moment of unbearable suspense. For Gally must make a decision that will forever change not only their lives, but the lives of all they touch.

Beautifully evocative, tender, and gripping, Ferney is a novel for anyone who's ever believed that two people are destined for each other, that passion has no end, and that true love never dies--a unique and unforgettable love story that truly stands the test of time.

James Long is the author of four acclaimed thrillers in England.  Ferney is his American debut. A former BBC correspondent, he lives in England.