Riding shotgun

For Pryor Deyhle Blackwood - "Cig" to her friends - nothing can cloud the excitement of tomorrow's hunt. Not the first anniversary of her husband's death, not even the pain of Blackie's legendary infidelities, still a hot topic in her small Virginia town. Dizzied by the demands of single motherhood and her flaky real-estate clients, Cig feels truly alive only when she's flying over a jump on her favorite horse.

But when the day of the hunt finally dawns, Cig gets more than she bargained for. First she learns the scandalous circumstances of her husband's final conquest. Then, as she and the other hunters take the field, they stumble on a skeleton in a tree trunk. Brooding, Cig rides alone through the foggy woods after a brazen, bushy-tailed red fox - and straight into a time warp.

It's 1699 in Virginia, and the family of another young woman named Pryor Deyhle await her return from London. They welcome Cig, a dead ringer, with open arms. And the warm, close, uncluttered life they live provokes questions in Cig about herself and her time, and her crazy triangle with Blackie and the last woman she lost him to. In the meantime there is a captivating stranger who could have beaten Blackie to the finish line - if only she'd met him in the right century.

But her own time isn't quite through with Cig, and return she will, to a world where her newfound serenity is quickly - and uproariously - challenged by her need to tell some hard truths, to herself and to the ones she loves.