![]() ![]() ![]() While her pursuit of a medical career forms the spine of the book, it is also one of the most anachronistic elements in the novel by the 4th century the laws which had provided the women of the Roman empire with a great deal of freedom and autonomy were largely a thing of the past. Her first-person protagonist is Charis, daughter of Theodoros of Ephesus, who in the 4th century wants to become a physician, an ambition she is willing to go to great lengths to fulfill. Sadly, her most recent book, The Beacon at Alexandria, lacks some of that fictional truth and while intriguing and well-written, does not ring with the veracity of her trilogy. The books were engrossing in every sense. She willed the reader back to the Dark Ages with each persuasive word. GILLIAN BRADSHAW'S Arthurian trilogy (Hawk of May, Kingdom of Summer and In Winter's Shadow) was marked by a strong sense of time and place, a quality of authenticity that gave all three books a fictional truth that set them apart from the usual run of historical - especially Arthurian/Celtic - novels. THE BEACON AT ALEXANDRIA By Gillian Bradshaw Houghton Mifflin. By Chelsea Quinn Yarbro September 14, 1986 ![]()
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