Product Description

The author of Venus Envy takes you on a riotous ride back to one woman's future...

In a delightful contemporary farce with a riotous twist, Rita Mae Brown welcomes you to Virginia's horse country, where a fox hunt is about to lead a 1990s woman, Cig Blackwood, into a 1690s adventure of the heart.  Infidelity, single motherhood, family betrayal, and the thrill of the hunt (in many varieties) are hilariously and poignantly played out in this captivating novel of time travel and self-discovery.


From the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #95721 in Books
• Published on: 1997-05-01
• Released on: 1997-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

From Publishers Weekly
As a fantastic plot device, time travel doesn't compare in originality to narration by a cat, but Brown's new novel, in which a modern-day Virginian is transported back to 1699, proves every bit as giddily enjoyable as her series of Mrs. Murphy mysteries told by feline extraordinaire Sneaky Pie Brown. Pryor "Cig" Blackwood is a middle-aged widow who plays her many roles in life-mother, realtor, horse-farm proprietor and master of the local foxhunt-with simple aplomb and wit. Life hasn't been too much fun, however, since Cig's husband died a year ago-and it gets a lot grimmer when, during a foxhunt, Cig learns that he died naked in her sister's bed. Moments after that revelation, however, she's flung back into Colonial Virginia. There, she's accepted as the twin sister, newly arrived from England, of one of her ancestors, and learns much about the meaning of community and family. She also attracts two dynamic men, one of whom she beds, who fight each another for her affections. Then Cig is thrown back into the present, where she uses her newfound wisdom to reintegrate her life. With its feisty heroine, vivid period detail and well-turned plot twists, this novel is charming enough to make even the cranky Sneaky Pie purr with delight.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Brown, perhaps the only novelist to acknowledge her cat as coauthor (e.g., Pay Dirt, with Sneaky Pie Brown, LJ 10/15/95), here tells of a Nineties woman who travels back in time to 1699.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Brown's latest nonmystery novel rests on an old-fashioned literary conceit that could easily have fallen flat. But it works like a charm in Brown's capable hands. Virginia realtor Cig Blackwood is recently widowed, and with two children living at home, she struggles to make ends meet. Riding to the hounds is her passion, and one day, during a fox hunt, she is catapulted back in time to the year 1699, where she lives for a while with her own ancestors. In colonial times, she leads a whole new life and even falls in love. It becomes obvious to the reader long before it occurs to her that the purpose of this time-travel journey is for her to learn truths about love and marriage and, particularly, to come to terms with the jolting news she learned immediately before leaving the twentieth century and zooming back to the seventeenth: that her beloved sister and her late husband had a fling. Brown has done her homework well on the historical detail, and when it's time for Cig to come home again, Brown gives us a delightfully romantic ending. Brad Hooper

Customer Reviews

Riding Shotgun
If the dunce from Kirkus Reviews had actually read Riding Shotgun, he would have learned that the reason Cig is named "Cig" is because one of her middle names is "Chesterfield".

Brown has the talent of writing stories which move, without being intense. Her knowledge of and attention to detail, both period and equestrian, are rewarding. She stretches a little to make the story of "Riding" hang together, but it's such an entertaining story, the reader is quite willing to stretch with her.

Riding Shotgun
I have read this book 7 times and never tire of it. My daughter is now reading it. The characters are wonderful, and having run my own barn, very believable and true to form. All in all it was one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. I am looking forward to her next equine type book, although I have read most of her other ones and love them all.

Brilliant in parts, not a great as a whole
The period scenes are marvelous, as are the vivid descriptions of fox hunting etc. But Cig, the title character, was thoroughly unlikeable to me. Her treatment of her daughter sent chills down my spine. This woman was so totally selfish and self absorbed that by the end of the book I found it difficult to care what happened to her! Also, while the book was excellent in parts, it definitely dragged in others mainly because (as one reviewer has already pointed out), there was a lot of prior novel plot/dialouge rehashing. Not one of Rita Mae's best.....