The Plague Tales - Tapa dura

Two parallel stories, one set in the fourteenth, the other in the twenty-first century, feature two unwitting heroes who confront the release of the bubonic plague on an unsuspecting world. A first novel. 40,000 first printing.

entury physician Alejandro Guzman, caught performing an autopsy in Spain, flees across Europe at the time of the Black Death to escape execution for his heretical deed. When he arrives in the Papal city of Avignon, he is conscripted against his will to serve as a Plague Doctor in the court of England's Edward III. Unfolding in a dramatic counterpoint is the story of American medical archaeologist Janie Crowe, in England at the turn of the 21st century to recover from the tragic loss of her family. She digs up a medieval artifact as part of her research and unwittingly releases a deadly plague bacterium on an unprepared world. These two unwilling heroes from two different centuries are linked by history and defined by circumstance. Here are their stories--the plague tales.