Monday, January 17, 2022

Review: The Outcasts of Time / Ian Mortimer

Throughout this weekend, I have been skipping through time while reading Mortimer's Outcasts of Time.

Can you imagine living in the midst of a pandemic? Oh, you can? Well, what if it was the black plague? What if there wasn't modern medicine to care for those in need? What if people were dying in the streets and in the fields or in their homes? That is what is happening at the beginning of this story as John and his brother stride through the streets of their community.  John wants to do good deeds and when he finds a baby under the body of a dead woman he picks it up, but life turns to horror when he discovers the baby is infected with the plague. 

As John fears his immenent death he hears a voice, a voice of second chance. He learns that he will live for six more day. However he will skip through the centuries and each of these days will take place 99 years after the last. 

What stays the same? What is different? Is there salvation in good deeds, in a life well lived? Can man make a difference?

Take a break from our own pandemic and trapse through time with John and decide if you agree with John's sentiment:

"The man who has no knowledge of the past has no wisdom."

 Find this book on the shelves at South or through Hoopla at the Nashua Public Library.

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