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THE TENTH GIFT
By Jane Johnson
Doubleday Canada, 385 pages, $29.95

The U.K. edition of Jane Johnson's first novel, The Tenth Gift, is titled Crossed Bones, and its cover image gives much more insight into what's between the pages than the North American cover, with its depiction of an old book lying on a piece of embroidery. Crossed Bones features a beautiful redhead with laced bodice and a sailing ship in the background. You can judge a book by its cover.

Whatever the title, the novel is a romance with two time lines — the early 17th century and contemporary. Johnson's two heroines — Catherine Ann Tregenna (aka Cat) and Julia Lovat — are united by a book that Julia's lover Andrew (also her friend's husband) gives her when he dumps her. The book is a 17th-century volume on embroidery patterns, and both women are skilled in this art. Julia discovers that Cat had been given the book by the cousin she is supposed to marry and doesn't want to, and that Cat has added her own journal in the spaces of the book.

The historical part saves the book from being a bodice-ripper/chick-lit hybrid. At least a bit. While researching an ancestor who was stolen by pirates, Johnson (who is publishing director at HarperCollins UK and writes epic fantasy under the name Jude Fisher) discovered love in Morocco, so there's a triple layer of romance.

The history lesson centres on the kidnapping of about 60 people from a church in Cornwall in 1625. They are stolen by Muslim corsairs and taken to Morocco to be sold as slaves. The novel moves between the two time frames as Julia delves into Cat's story and then decides to go to Morocco for further exploration.

Johnson gives a fascinating glimpse into life in the 17th century, but the main problem with the novel is the unlikeability quotient of both Cat and Julia. Cat longs for something more than life in Cornwall. She wants to be a master embroiderer, but that's a role for men. She wants out of the stifling atmosphere of being a servant in the country home of Sir Arthur and Lady Harris. She hopes that through her embroidery, she can make a new life for herself and somehow end up in London.

Julia lives in London and makes the journey to Cornwall to be with her cousin Alison after Alison's husband hangs himself in the attic. Andrew shows up, ostensibly to inspect a house his wife has inherited, but he wants to gets his hands back on the book he gave Julia — and he originally got from Alison. Andrew, by the way, is a money-grubbing, self-centred jerk, and why any woman would put up with him is beyond me, but he has carried on his affair with Julia for years, and his wife loves him.

Both the historical and contemporary parts of the novel deal with religious and cultural differences, and in a clichéd manner, the two most appealing characters are the Moroccan men: Qasem, the corsair (different from a pirate in that a corsair shares the profit with his community and a pirate does not) who takes the Cornish people, including Cat, to Morocco, and Idriss, Julia's guide in Morocco.

The hokeyness factor is rather high, but Johnson manages to keep readers going by constant use of time switches. Just when the action builds with Cat, Johnson switches to Julia, and vice versa. The 17th-century sections are in third person (apart from Cat's journal), and the contemporary parts are narrated by Julia. Both narrative voices are awkward. For example, when the so-called pirates enter the Cornish church to kidnap their prey, the description of the leader is, well, conventional at best: "His skin was the colour of polished walnut, and a length of burgundy cotton had been wound around his head, the fabric falling in folds to his shoulders. He wore a silver belt and heavy silver bracelets on his dark forearms, and his scimitar was richly damascened. … With his long, straight nose and his keen black eyes, he looked like a bird of prey, capable, controlled, and ruthless, Cat thought, and she felt a chill run through her."

Julia's narrative is equally banal: "Like a mindless automaton I found myself walking toward him, and then my head was resting on his shoulder and I could smell the ironed-linen smell of his shirt and a trace of his usual cologne, heated by his body, beneath. He cupped my head against him, and I felt the beat of his pulse quicken." As far as I can remember there are no heaving breasts, but the writing is formulaic.

Nevertheless, I was compelled by the story, largely because the events did happen. Johnson has fictionalized the characters and the details of this particular plot, but Europeans were taken into slavery by North Africans — just as people all over the world have been enslaved and enslaving each other for millennia. She includes a short list of source material about piracy, and in the Author's Note remarks that the "Barbary corsair raids on the south coasts of England, which took place intermittently over the course of more than two hundred years during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, have been increasingly well documented over the past few years," but that when she grew up in Cornwall, the history wasn't discussed.

So even though you have to wade through some sticky writing, the story is fascinating — and based on reality.