Summary

Melisande Stokes addresses the reader, declaring that she is chronicling her story in order to prove that she was a U.S. government employee in the twenty-first century who is trapped in 1851 London, England. She explains that she arrived there by magic, but cannot escape because magic ends on July 28th, 1851, which is only weeks away. She assures the reader that she is safe, but no longer expects to escape.

Mel’s story begins at the end of the summer in an unspecified year in the early twenty-first century. She is an untenured university lecturer in Harvard University’s Linguistics Department. One day as she passes the door of her despised Department Chair, Dr. Roger Blevins, she collides with Tristan Lyons, a young man of military bearing to whom she is immediately attracted. Mel agrees to go out for coffee with...