The Fourth Sword
Sometimes, fate shatters the best-laid plans. In 1974, Elise, a young Belgian woman, loves being a nurse and thinks she has her entire future planned. Unfortunately, an inexplicable event turns her life upside down as she wakes up on a battlefield in 1706 in what was then called the Southern Netherlands.
Upon learning that she can never return to her time, she reluctantly accepts that she must comply with society’s archaic and oppressive rules regarding her gender. Only two options are available for her life: marriage or joining a religious order. She wishes to pursue her nursing vocation, but she would need to become a nun and abandon her independence. Elise has many suitors, but none of them understand her dreams for a life of purpose–until she meets a dashing British officer. However, she is a commoner, and his aristocratic parents oppose their union.
Along her journey in a war-torn world, Elise encounters multiple challenges. Severe weather, famine, epidemics, and hundreds of wounded soldiers test her nursing skills. Something worse tests her courage. Extremists gathering support for their political ambitions accuse independent-minded women of witchcraft. Risking far more than her freedom, she must face them armed only with her capacity for compassion.
A Land of Hope and Spirits
For Elise, a time-traveling nurse from the 1970s, marriage comes with challenges. Allan Crowley, the man she weds in 1711 is a spy for the Kingdom of Great Britain. Officially, he is a British lord and officer joining an expedition to capture Québec from the French. His real mission is to neutralize spies, traitors, and Jacobites in Colonial New England.
Sailing across the ocean with Allan and the British fleet, Elise discovers she is pregnant and looks forward to raising her family in America. In Boston, she quickly realizes that the Puritan inhabitants of the Province of Massachusetts Bay are not welcoming and staunchly anti-Catholic, and Elise must adjust her lifestyle to fit in this rigid paternalistic society. Worse, after Allan departs to lead his troops against the French, his local adversaries threaten Elise’s life, forcing her to escape the city.
After the failure of the Québec expedition, Elise and Allan settle in the scenic Connecticut River Valley, forming alliances with the local Mohicans and a forward-looking group of Puritans. As Allan unmasks and eliminates his enemies, Elise faces an implacable nemesis whose ambition is to turn the Abenaki tribes inhabiting the Vermont Territory into an army against encroaching British colonists. She must disregard her own safety to secure peace and protect her growing family.