Cathy is a history professor and is married to Al White. One rainy night they are in a car accident that sends Cathy back in time. When she wakes, she finds that she is in the year 620 A.D. There she is found and taken to an Anglo-Saxon village. This is just the beginning of her journey back in time. Her knowledge about the future helps her adventures. Although amazed by what she sees, she worries about her husband and wonders how she will get back to the time where she belongs.
Rosemary Goodwin has written an imaginative and intriguing adventure that will send you on an adventure back in time. Thorough research and interesting true facts, dispersed throughout the story, bring the different eras to life. This is reinforced by the compelling characters that show what it was like to live during different times in history. Cathy is a fascinating character for her ability to adapt and bravely face each of her trials. Because of the way the story begins I wondered if Cathy was really experiencing a trip through time. This stirred my curiosity and kept my interest until the very end.
Throughout the story, THE DRAGONFLY, there is passion and there are many chances at romance. I enjoyed the fact that Cathy struggled with the knowledge she has a husband in a different time. These times left me wondering about what I would do if placed in a similar situation. I found many surprises throughout the story that added to the conflicting emotions.
THE DRAGONFLY is a remarkable time-travel adventure filled with excitement and romance. It will appeal to readers that enjoy history because of the careful research that was involved in creating this story.

Present Time
West Stow

In the pub’s parking lot, cars nuzzled into the parking spaces next to the building, like suckling pigs on the teats of a sow.

Albert (“Just call me Al”) White and his attractive wife, Catherine, known as Cathy to her friends, had edged their way out of the crowded pub. “See you Saturday,” she called back over her shoulder to their friends.

“Race you to the car,” Al dared as they darted out into the rainy night. He’d parked their car cautiously between two large vehicles.

“You’re on.” Cathy giggled as she pulled her jacket up over her head to protect her hair.

They opened the car doors and landed simultaneously with a flump onto the front seats. Cathy shook the rainwater from her coat. Some splashed onto Al.

“Sorry about that.” She laughed.

“You really look it.” Al grinned.

“Al, I’m shocked,” Cathy said with mock offense.

He wiped the foggy windshield with his handkerchief. “Now, don’t distract me from my driving.”

“You’re not driving yet! You haven’t even turned the engine on,” she snapped.

“Just warning you.” He glanced at her. “Don’t get nasty now.”

“I apologize. Just tired.”

“That’s not an excuse.”

He turned the key, and the engine purred to life. He popped a favorite CD into the player, and the car soon filled with the haunting, soulful melody of a clear-voiced pan flute.

“I’m going to go home the back way.”

“Whatever.” She pouted.

He exited the parking lot slowly, after checking in both directions for cars.

“I’ll go through West Stow. Not so much traffic that way. It’s hard to see in this rain.” He squinted as the lights of an oncoming car glared in his eyes. “Must get new wipers this week.”

“We’ll light the fire as soon as we get home. This weather is disgusting. The cold goes right through to the bone,” Cathy whined. She dug her hands inside her coat pockets and slumped down in her seat. “I wish we were back in the States where it’s warm.” She leaned her head back onto the seat’s headrest, while the rhythm of the music entered and began to calm her whole being.

“We can’t be on holiday all the time.” Al eased the car around the sharp corners of the narrow country roads meant for use by horses and carts, and not for the horsepower of today’s careening automobiles. Cathy slid upright in her seat.

She glanced through the gates as they drove by the old West Stow church, now almost deserted by the villagers, where generations of her family lay huddled in their eternal sleep in the churchyard. So many families moldered there at St. Mary’s, beginning centuries ago, but with youngsters apparently no longer interested in the lovely old church, she wondered who would tend their graves when they were in there. Most of the churchyard had already become an overgrown tangle of weeds with ivy and gray lichen clinging to the gravestones, obliterating their owners’ identities and eventually crumbling, returning to earthen minerals once more.

She thought of her mother, Janice. They should visit her tomorrow in town where she lived alone since the death of her husband. He’d been a farmer with a large farm, but it was sold off to pay debts.

Janice could be described as a timid woman brought up during World War II by an even more timid woman. She’d been raised to behave as all “good” girls should, in the opinion of the times.

As a young woman, Janice had vowed she would not raise her only child, a daughter, in a similar fashion. Consequently, Cathy grew into a happy, bubbly child, allowed to run in the rain without her shoes and climb trees with the boys. The child had a tremendous curiosity about the world and would ask grownups a hundred questions. Janice liked to think her little girl had grown into a self-assured, strong, and educated woman.

“Must drop by tomorrow to see Mum,” she said.

Al mumbled in the affirmative, while concentrating on the road ahead. His parents had died recently and, since then, he’d become closer to his mother-in-law. Of course he worried about his mother-in-law living alone, but she had a stubborn streak, or was fiercely independent as Cathy insisted, and preferred to live by herself.

Al turned the car left at the row of thatched cottages, drove past the historic Tudor Village Hall and then by the stone cottage where her grandparents had lived. She remembered warm sunny days spent with her cousins in the gardens, playing shop or house in the huge clumps of lilac bushes.

“Seems like another time.” She sighed.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“When I was a child,” she chatted on, “out of sight of our parents, my cousins and I would lean over the sides of the old well and let down the pail on its chain into the dark water of the old-fashioned rock well.”

Al gave a distracted, “Uh-huh.”

“Then we’d turn the handle to raise the pail up again. We’d peer into the cool water, which sometimes contained a hitchhiker frog.”

“Sounds like loads of fun.”

“Then we’d half-fill sticky jam jars with water, put a hole in the lid with a nail, then we’d hang them with string high in the Victoria plum and greengage trees to entice robber wasps to certain demise.”

“I love plums, too.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about!” She smacked him on the arm. “I’m recalling cherished childhood memories.”

“Easy on the arm. It’s raining cats and dogs, and I’m trying to concentrate on the road. Now be quiet for a while.”

She sighed. Just thinking about those old days made her sad. The people now were merely ghosts, existing only in memories, just wisps of ectoplasm floating through time.

The car climbed the incline by the Crooked Chimney Row houses, which now had correct straight chimneys, and cruised along the road bordered with the forest of tall pines. The headlights hit a sign on the left hand side of the road. Recreated Anglo-Saxon Village it read, with a discreet arrow pointing into the darkness.

The rain had slowed down to a drizzle, and Al turned the wipers down to intermittent. Tall trees loomed over and marched along the sides of the road, making it seem like a leafy tunnel which dripped rain onto the tarmac below.

“I’d better look out for deer along here,” he said quietly, almost to himself.

Cathy stared ahead into the darkness. Two orbs flashed back at them from the left side of the road. She gasped. “Watch out. Animal ahead! Did you see its eyes?”

“It’s low to the ground—not a deer.” He applied the brakes.

Suddenly, the orbs turned away from the headlights and the dark shape of a fox darted out into the road ahead of them.

“Damn it,” Al yelled as he pulled the steering wheel to the right to avoid the animal. The tires squealed as they slid on the wet road surface. The car hurled sideways, thrown into a skid. He jerked the steering wheel to the left to come out of the skid, but he’d over-steered, and the car headed for the side of the road toward a ditch. He wrenched the steering wheel to the right again, but momentum took over and the car began to spin.

“Jam on your brakes,” Cathy screamed. “Watch out for the bank!”

“I am,” he shouted. “Just hold tight!”

He wrapped his hands around the steering wheel. They were in a death grip as he tried to point the wheels into the spin. The tires screeched. The force of the spin dragged the car across the road—balanced only on the two tires on the driver’s side—the other two tires hung crazily in the air. The car seemed to be held there by an invisible thread. Then, with a crunching scrape, the airborne tires touched back to the ground. The car lurched across the road and straddled the roadside ditch with a loud thud.

She squeezed her eyelids closed to shut out the expected image of tangled car parts and smashed glass.

The car shuddered to a sudden stop with the crunch of metal scraping on metal as it folded onto itself. Glass fragments showered over them. Her body pitched toward the windshield, only to be punched in the chest by the inflating airbag. Searing pain ripped through her chest as her body twisted. Her skull bashed against the passenger-side window. The engine hissed steam. She smelled smoke. The headlights pierced the darkness.

“Al!” she screeched. Her lips swelled as she licked the warm liquid running into her mouth. Blood gushed out of a gash on her forehead. She looked over at her husband. His body slumped back in his seat, while his mouth gaped open and a dark line of blood ran down his chin. His legs were splayed at crazy angles to his body.

Cathy struggled to reach over to him, but was blocked by the steering wheel and dashboard that pinned him in his seat.

“Oh, my darling,” she moaned. “Please don’t leave me.” She couldn’t bring herself to say, “Don’t die.” To even think it would be fatalistic—so negative—no, she couldn’t think that way. Her strong, virile husband seemed so fragile lying there injured.

A headache pounded inside her skull, and the surroundings began to spin. She must get some help; she must get an ambulance. The dashboard bulged inward toward her but she could still move her arms. She opened the door, which swung open with a creak, and then fumbled around her until she found the button to her seatbelt and pushed.

The belt released her and dumped her on the ground outside of the car. The vehicle rested at an angle, but not quite on its side. The engine hissed in a twisted knot of metal against two piles of dark grey and white flint rocks. She recognized it as part of the Anglo-Saxon village entrance.

Must be a gate, she thought. Must crawl—can’t stand up—too dizzy. She told herself to crawl toward the wall where she could lean and flag down a passing car to help. They needed an ambulance.

Am I dreaming? It seemed moments ago that they were at the pub where the yeasty smell of beer and the noise of the crowd gathered in the low-ceilinged bar assailed them. A friend, Colonel Hambro, a red-cheeked, retired military man, had turned, raised his mug of beer, and yelled over the din. “We hope you’re home for a while now.”

Cathy had stared at the man’s jacket, which jingled as he moved. Several shiny medals hung from faded ribbons on the tweed jacket’s lapel. “Just been at a ‘do’ at the British Legion Hall,” he explained as he patted the medals. “World War II commemoration. Well, anyway, so glad you two are back. It’s pretty dull around here when you’re away.”

And it was a pleasure to see friends after several weeks away, although neither of them was anxious to return to the tedium of academe. They’d been granted a sabbatical from the university. For eight full weeks, they’d shed their duties. He’d been freed from imparting sociological studies such as Malinowski and the canoe-building traditions of the Trobianders in New Guinea to pimply, apathetic students.

Cathy had finished a challenging refresher course in Old English—a class she needed in order to scour the archives for her dissertation due the following academic year. Alternative and Natural Medicine: Effects on a Society through History from Anglo-Saxon to Today’s Population. An ambitious title for what, she hoped, would be a significant sociological research paper.

But look at me now. Am I crazy? I’m crawling around in a ditch. As she pushed herself along the ground, she felt her hands and knees warm as they were cut and bled from the broken window glass in her path. She gathered more strength as she pulled her body away from the crushed metal. Everything spun around and around, so she lay still, face down in the mud.
Were the last weeks on vacation a dream, or is right now a dream?

She and Al had driven up and down the East coast of the U.S., sightseeing and poking around fascinating historical locations. They’d felt liberated, even giddy, like children just let out of school for the summer holidays. The newly discovered places provided them with a fresh perspective since so many locations in the U.S., like Jamestown and New England, were connected through history to their own county of Suffolk, back in England.

I must have imagined it all.

The headlights of an approaching car lit up the horrific scene. Steam and smoke rose from the wreck as the car screeched to a stop, and two men jumped out. One man ran over to the driver’s broken window and stuck his hand through it and held his fingers on Al’s neck.

“This one’s a goner,” he yelled over to other man who held a small cell phone to his ear as he shrieked out the details of the accident to the authorities.

Cathy stirred from her dizziness and shook her head to clear out the muddled thoughts. She patted her pant’s pocket to make sure she had her own cell phone. Good—it’s there.

“No. He can’t be dead!” she tried to scream, but no sound escaped from her mouth. The words rumbled in her throat. “Help me. Please, help me.”

This must be one of my nightmares again. I yell, but no one hears me. They haven’t seen me over here. I must try to get up—wave my arms—something to attract their attention. Need an ambulance or a doctor for Al. He’s still alive. These two are not doctors—just country clodhoppers with no medical training.

She gathered up all of her strength, pulled herself across the glass-littered mud, and through the stone entrance. Her fingers clutched at rocks, ripping her fingernails. Exhausted, sobbing, bleeding, and losing consciousness, she collapsed into a pitiful heap. The sounds of a flute floated through the steam and smoke.