Benson, Ann
Entry updated 4 November 2024. Tagged: Author.
Working name of US bead artist and author Annalise E Benson Glassman (1950- ), whose Plague Tales sequence beginning with The Plague Tales (1997) conflates two disasters, the fourteenth-century Black Death and a twenty-first century Pandemic in the form of a new assault of bubonic plague. In this first volume, the physician protagonist of the medieval narrative dies in England; in modern times, a medical archaeologist, also in England, unearths an artefact infected with deadly bacteria. The Burning Road (1999) inconclusively continues the double narrative, complicating it; set slightly later, The Physician's Tale (2006) depicts a modern world moving into Post-Holocaust travails, while the medieval physician, also entangled in family dilemmas, seeks the aid of Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1340-1400). A singleton, Thief of Souls (2002), repeats the basic time-doubling, in this case interpositioning the savage life of Gilles de Rais (1405-1440) with a series of disappearances of Children in twenty-first century Los Angeles (see California). [JC]
Annalise E Benson Glassman
born March 1950
works (fiction only)
series
Plague Tales
- The Plague Tales (New York: Delacorte Press, 1997) [Plague Tales: hb/Honi Werner from Hieronymus Bosch]
- The Burning Road (New York: Delacorte Press, 1999) [Plague Tales: hb/]
- The Physician's Tale (New York: Delacorte Press, 2006) [Plague Tales: hb/]
individual titles
- Thief of Souls (New York: Delacorte Press, 2002) [hb/]
links
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