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The Renaissance Club (The Timegathering Series)
Rachel Dacus, author
Young art historian May Gold is trapped in a dead-end college teaching job and a slowly failing love affair with an older professor. Yearning to fly free of job and dead-end relationship, she feels like a precocious failure. When the floor under the gilded dome of St Peter's basilica rocks under her feet, May finds herself in the year 1624, staring straight into the eyes of her idol. But can she make a relationship with a man five hundred years in the past, in a brief hour or two at a time? And how do the folds of time part for her—is it simply by wishing to see him again, and does she leave him by doubting her ability to stay? Meanwhile, her elderly department head finds her own answers to the grief of losing a grown daughter when time unfolds for conversations with her artistic hero, Michelangelo, who recommends she adopt a mentee, and Eva considers her previously despised employee, May Gold. As the tour proceeds, May and Gianlorenzo grab brief, passionate moments together, but history says they have no future. Eva offer May the career path she has wished for, but perhaps too late. Can May find a way—and the courage—to give up everything, even the time in which she lives, to be with her soulmate?
Reviews
Dacus’s debut is a delightful dance between present-day and Renaissance Italy, and will submerge readers in the art of Bernini, Michelangelo, and more. May Gold, a 26-year-old adjunct art history professor from California, has joined her colleagues on their Renaissance club’s trip to Italy, where they visit Assisi, Florence, Rome, Siena, and Venice. When May meets their tour guide, George St. James, she’s pleased by his playful attitude and intrigued by his hints about the malleability of time. Even before the first day in Rome is finished, May is transported back to the Renaissance and interacts with her idol, Gianlorenzo Bernini, 500 years in the past. She soon learns that she can slide effortlessly between that past and her present, although she isn’t certain how the time travel is achieved. Her visits with the great sculptor are often more satisfying than her current life, where she’s dating a fellow professor and her surly department head is plotting to end her career. May, meanwhile, is more inclined to pursue writing poetry than remaining in academia, and Bernini couldn’t agree more. This story of art and artists across time is peppered with colorful characters, sexy interludes, and instances of poetic prose. It’s a perfect fit for art lovers seeking a lovely to-and-fro escape through time. (BookLife)
