Ever hear strange sounds in the night? Ever investigate only to be relieved to find nothing there? What if you investigated, found the inexplicable source and were catapulted 150 years back into the past? And what if you discovered the one person who could give you everything you wanted? That’s the premise of Victoria Chancellor’s newest novel A Cry At Midnight.

Randi Galloway is 25 years old and living with her parents after a disastrous relationship and the loss of her baby. One night while working as a cleaner in a local museum she hears a baby’s cry. It sounds like it’s coming from inside the plastic model of a plantation destroyed in a flood over a century before. After several nights of these disturbing sounds, Randi pries the house open – and wakes up in it holding a crying baby in her arms.

Jackson Durant is a single father in 19th century America. The only thing he loves more than his plantation is his daughter, Rose. The only thing that disturbs him more than the ever rising Mississippi is the attractive stranger he found in Rose’s bedroom. Never has he seen a woman in such scandalous, horrible clothing. He is certain she is lying to him about her past, but something about her makes him take her into his home and allows her to care for his daughter.

A Cry At Midnight is an interesting and often touching book. Randi’s sense of loss makes it all the harder for her not to become attached to Rose – and her sometimes overbearing father. Knowing that history records both Jackson and Rose as having died in the flood of 1849, she desperately tries to find some way to save them both, but her fear of drowning cripples her courage.

Victoria Chancellor attacks the subject of time travel with a combination of believability and whimsy. One thing that helps make her writing believable is the characters and their reactions to such fantastic events. Both Jackson and Randi are sympathetic characters, and although Jackson is a bit hard to take sometimes, he seems to be an accurate representation of a 19th century American male. Randi, on the other hand is completely modern and longs for her comfortable jeans rather than the glamorous clothing of the antebellum era.

These two characters are drawn to each other almost from the first moment they meet. Their relationship matures to the point where not even time can keep them apart. The tension between them is hot and heavy, and for the most part, Jackson handles the discovery that Randi is not a virgin with surprising calm – especially once they sleep together.

There were some issues I had problems with – such as the mention of Jackson’s former father-in-law as his beneficiary. The fact that he would benefit from Jackson’s death greatly upset Randi, but the reasons for her fears weren’t quite clear. We’re never told whether he was responsible for the destruction of the plantation, nor how he would benefit for if he was indeed such a villain. The ending seemed a bit rushed and tossed together – a bit anti-climatic. Still, it was an entertaining story and I liked how Chancellor sent Randi back in time. I definitely recommend this book to all time travel enthusiasts and those who love books about the old South. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I hear a baby crying.