A fairly formulaic outing in the modern-joe-travels-to-the-past genre, but it’s a solidly entertaining read. The Connecticut yankee is in this case a struggling single mom from the Valley, and the court is an edge-of-the-empire garrison town in 2nd century Rome. She learns the requisite life lessons about what’s really important as she deals with lice, plague, war, and the Emperor (who just happens to be passing through…) The wild improbableness of it all didn’t detract too much from the fun.