This Time

Joan Szechtman

2009

Basset Books

Trade paperback. 343 pages

$19.95

Reviewed by Betsy Murphy

There is something about the time-travel genre which leads readers to expect an endless series of comparisons between the marvels of today and the far simpler times from which the main characters hail. How ever will they adjust to indoor plumbing, interstate highways, or even the capacious closets now needed to house the ordinary person’s changes of clothing and bedding?

This Time by Joan Szechtman is a welcome departure from the expected gee-wizardy of the genre. In its pages Szechtman leverages her own engineering expertise into a story in which Richard III is snatched from the jaws of certain death at the battle of Bosworth and brought forward 519 years into the lab of a technology company in Portland, Oregon, a project financed and shepherded by a entrepreneurial Korean War veteran who believes that Richard has been unfairly maligned by historians in general and one particular bard of Avon in particular.

The how and why of Richard’s transportation across time is deftly handled, but not dwelt upon beyond that. Although he was originally intended to be debriefed and then returned to his 1485 battlefield, complications emerge including two love affairs; one with the early 21^st century and the other with a woman who had developed the prototype for the time-travel machine while still a high school student but is now divorced with two children and – most unsuitable to the old Richard II – Jewish.

What makes this unlikely story work is Richard’s character and how he chooses to adapt to being the oldest 30-something man on the block. Szechtman mercifully avoids the obvious devices of the newly transplanted looking for the newscaster inside the television and focuses on Richard’s development as an individual – one who confronts his era’s antisemitism after watching a holocaust documentary and wrestles with the accountability issues raised by the Abu Ghraib in both a modern context and Richard’s own.

Historical issues surface as would be expected: What happened to Edward V and Richard of York - Richard’s two illegitimate nephews by his brother Edward IV and potential contenders to the throne: Did Richard III have them killed after sending them to the tower of London, as some historians have claimed, or can he prove that he had them sent to Portugal for their own safety? Judging by the number of King Richard III societies and blogs on the Internet and meeting groups in larger cities, curiosity about the princes in the tower is at least as strong today as it was 500 years ago.

Along with clearing his good name, Richard most wants to use technology to save the lives of his wife Anne and his son Edward although for technical reasons only Edward turns out to be the only one who can be saved if brought into modern times. Much of the second half of the book deals with Richard’s increasing leadership in the company which is responsible for bringing him into the present day. It is this rapid rise of Richard’s corporate career which strains credulity, or at least asks the reader to accept a fair degree of elastic pretense.

Still, This Time is an engaging read; well done, intriguing, and a different look at both Richard III’s character and our own times as well.

I have a material connection because I received a review copy that I can keep for consideration in preparing to write this content. I was not expected to return this item after my review.