Most of us read to escape our everyday lives, hoping to find ourselves in the magical world of “what if”. Whether it be science fiction, fantasy, mystery or romance we want to be surrounded by a whole new world of possibilities. Time travel brings its own set of “what ifs”: what if you could time travel, where would you go, when would you go, what would you want to experience when you got there? Then there are those thoughts of what if I did something to change the future? Would the future as I know it be there when I return? Then of course there’s a fear that maybe you couldn’t return; could you live the rest of your life in a primitive world? In Kathryn Meyer Griffith’s Egyptian Heart, one woman is faced with those very questions. What would you do?

Maggie Owen’s career as an Egyptologist is something she has worked for all her life. Even though a trip to Egypt to search for a necropolis beyond the Giza pyramids is something she has dreamt of, it doesn’t fill that void in her life. Now that she has achieved her goals she finds that she has little to fill her life but her cat and an empty apartment.

Working in the sweltering heat of Egypt, Maggie discovers the tomb of Ramose Nakh-Min, a general with close ties to the throne of Pharaoh Akhenaton. Among the treasures of Ramose Nakh-Min, she finds an amulet in his sarcophagus that hurls her back to 1340 B.C.

Bewildered and disoriented, she is rounded up with a band of runaway slaves. Maggie stands out among the slaves with her fair coloring and jinn green eyes, which draws the attention of Ramose himself. In the beginning she is feared as a sorceress; soon she makes friends among the slaves and even Ramose finds that he is drawn to Maggie’s gentle soul, but she also makes deadly enemies; enemies who will stop at nothing to see her dead.

She has fallen into the perilous reign of Pharaoh Akhenaton whose sweeping changes force the people to worship Aton instead of many gods, and even setting their beloved Queen Nefertiti aside that causes the people to rise up against him. And Maggie’s caught in the middle of it.

Can their love for each other keep them together? Or will she be whisked away in a flash? Can she help Ramose to make a difference in his world?

I’m going to sound prejudiced here because I really like Ms. Griffith’s work, but I really enjoyed Maggie and Ramose’s story. This is one of those stories you become immersed in and find yourself wanting to know more about their lives after you close the cover on the last page of the book. In so many ways a simple sweet love story and yet full of the things in that time period that were so dangerous. Egyptian Heart is a definite keeper.

Reviewed by Theresa
© March 2008