The iron bridge

An exciting debut novel, David Morse's The Iron Bridge bears more than a passing resemblance in premise to Connie Willis's award-winning time-travel tales, Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog. The common idea: a young, slightly confused person tries to get a seemingly simple task accomplished in the distant past, only to find out that life then was easily as chaotic as life now, and that her task won't be so simple. Morse departs from Willis's path in that his heroine, Maggie Foster, is beamed back to 1773 England from a decidedly dystopian future in which rampant industrial growth has resulted in ecological collapse. If Maggie can spoil the success of the world's first iron bridge, then the industrial revolution--and humanity's ecological record of shame--may be prevented. The Iron Bridge is melancholy and thoughtful, focusing on the worries and passions of Maggie and the ironworking Quaker family she becomes attached to. Maggie's dilemma is tough--everyone wants the bridge built well, including the people she comes to care about. If she fails, the course of history will lead to ecological disaster; if she succeeds, her loved ones in the future will cease to have existed, and her adopted family will be ruined. --Therese Littleton