The Conjured Woman

Anne Gross’s novel The Quiet Woman tells the story of a modern day, time traveling nurse, Elise Dubis, who is conjured into Napoleonic era France by a likable fortune teller, Adelaide Lenormand. Elise, after snatching an emerald scarab from around Napoleon’s neck, is then transported horizontally in time to a land outside a pub in London. She spends the novel trying to figure out how to live in that time period and keep her identity secret until she can somehow manage to return to 21st Century Arizona where she belongs.

Although The Quiet Woman is billed as historical fiction, I find that very hard to agree with. It seems the author has done only the bare minimum amount of research into the Napoleonic time period as her historical mentions are the stuff of a modern grade school curriculum .

The characters are at best flat and at worst difficult to care about. The transitions are clunky and the plot leaves you turning to the end of the book to check how many pages you have left to read.