The Following review was contributed by: Molly Martin
Beth Kincaid whose pastime is brass rubbings and her husband Kevin have been traipsing to cemeteries all over England where Beth has been making rubbing after rubbing. Kevin’s endurance for the activity is wearing thin when his wife insists that she must have just one more after finding Olivia Elizabeth Avenlyng’s crypt nearly hidden in a church in Kent. She feels obliged to rub the eerily resplendent commemorative brass of a woman who expired 600 years ago in defiance of Kevin’s clamoring that he has had enough. Kevin leaves Beth to her inflexible pursuance and takes himself to a local pub. As Beth is rubbing the silhouette of the woman’s countenance there at Olivia’s entombment site she is drawn into another time and another life. Olivia is pregnant by the man she adores, wedded to a much older man who is barbarous to her and is despondent with her life. Beth’s return to the immediate means the life she has known previously will never be as it was prior to this experience. The unsettling occurrence is one Beth tries to put out of her remembrance as she and Kevin return home to the US.
Beth’s existence with Kevin has become one of almost daily arguments after only three years of marriage. Making things worse; his former wife Zenia is stalking them. She telephones, drives up and down their street and appears determined to cause as much problem for the pair as she can. Elizabeth as Olivia is calling herself appears to have followed Beth back to Illinois where the English woman crops up intermittently dragging Beth into antiquity and causing the young woman to wonder at her sanity. Kevin is unequivocal that the visitations Beth says she is undergoing are nothing more than her over active imaginativeness and he urges that Beth see a psychiatrist. Kevin’s assertive manner has grown more domineering, Zenia wants to break up the marriage between Beth and Kevin, and over all hangs the challenge of Elizabeth.
Not my favorite genre, however I found myself drawn into the narrative and anxious to find a good conclusion. In an extraordinary account of communication through time FLIGHT OF ANGELS carries the reader from today to the past and back again. Writer Gardiner had done a credible job in presenting Kevin’s irrational domination of Beth in haunting manner. Elizabeth and her contact with the distraught young woman and Zenia the stalker former wife are nicely countered by Beth’s understanding doctor and her delightful aged aunt.
The uncommon premise presented in this tale is absorbing and presented in a well written narrative by a talented author. Gardiner’s FLIGHT OF ANGELS is peopled with an engaging group of fiduciary characters. The circumstance of cross time interchange is presented in a thinkable manner. The narrative draws the reader into the yarn from the outset when we first meet Beth and Kevin arguing in Kent. As the life of Elizabeth/Olivia unfolds, intertwining with Beth’s modern time life the reader is carried along. At times I had to question how the disparate pair Beth and Kevin got together in the first place, they appear so ill suited. To their credit, and the writers, the couple are determined to make their marriage work. Dialogue is credible, the work is a well structured tale that is not technically a romance nevertheless with relationships strongly portrayed the work has enough romance to fit the genre.
The difficult task of plausible presentation of time travel has been nicely done in FLIGHT OF ANGELS. Ingenious writer Gardiner presents the particular method of transport with a variety of means of movement between the eras in an entertaining, plausible manner. This pleasing read will keep those who enjoy the paranormal with overtones of romance captivated from beginning to end.