Grey Dawn is an odd little book. It didn’t quite gel for me, but I admired its gumption. It’s always lovely to see an attempt to do something new with a story even if it doesn’t quite come together, and it had a lot of heart.

The book takes place in two time periods, both in Philadelphia. In 1858, Chloë and Leigh met. In Chloë’s words: 

We were an unlikely pair: she, born in a Fishtown tenement, the daughter of working-class Scotsmen; I, born at Cloughmore House, a daughter of privilege and power, with senators, judges, and men and women of letters in my pedigree and among my kin. Yet “we loved with a love that was more than love,” Leigh Andrea Hunter and I, and in those dark days before the War to Suppress the Rebellion, she was my light.

In alternating chapters, Chloë explains how she and Leigh met while they were both working for the Underground Railroad, and how Chloë became determined to fight in the Civil War and was able to disguise herself as male with the help of two transgender men who spotted her trying to enlist and showed her how to disguise herself effectively. 

To be clear, while the word “transgender” was not in use at the time, the men who help Chloë were identified as female at birth but consider themselves to be male. Chloë is cisgender (again, not a word in use at the time) but presents as male during the Civil War so that she can fight in the Army. When not in the Army, she uses she/her pronouns and she identifies herself as female. Historically, it seems likely based on evidence that both of these kinds of experiences (both presenting as male because of expediency and because of gender identity) occurred in the Civil War and I enjoyed seeing these experiences represented.

Meanwhile, in the other chapters, which are set in 2020, a woman named Leigh who just left the Army after multiple tours of duty in Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan joins the Joint Temporal Integrity Commission. Apparently people from the past have been showing up in the present. They are referred to as “temporally displaced.” One of these people is Chloë, who was on the battlefield one minute and in 2020 the next. Leigh is assigned to teach her how to live in the present day. This involves Chloë moving in with Leigh and spending virtually all her time with her until she is officially cleared to live independently.

Leigh is a transgender lesbian who spent much of her life closeted and who is adjusting to being openly female and lesbian as well as being out of the Army. She is half-Japanese, and both gender diversity and ethnic and cultural diversity are big parts of her life. Leigh (and eventually Chloë) live with Leigh’s bisexual cousin, Hiromi. It’s fun to see Chloë learn about modern terminology, speech, and fashion. It’s also fun and heartwarming to observe that the two Army combat veterans, both with physical and emotional scars from their time of service, share a common language and experience across centuries, as do the two women who have had to keep their sexual/gender identities secret for much of their lives (Chloë was sexually attracted to women in the 1800s and had to keep the nature of her relationship with 1800s Leigh a secret). In Leigh’s words:

Across 160 years of differing perspective, the three of us – cisgender bi woman, a trans lesbian, and a cisgender lesbian – recognized each other as family.

The problem is that the book leaves an awful lot out. 

What first happened when Chloë found herself in the modern era? 

Why isn’t she frantic to get home to the Leigh of the 1800s? We are told early on that modern-day Leigh is a reincarnated version of the other Leigh, not the same person that lived before, although Leigh herself doesn’t realize this until later in the book. She has many similarities to the past woman, but is very much her own person. It’s bizarre to see Chloë express such love for Leigh in the 1800’s and then move on from her so quickly in 2020.

In more general terms, how does Chloë adjust so quickly to modern life, which includes the loss of all her loved ones? As an abolitionist and a proponent of women’s suffrage, and as a woman whose war work both in and out of the army exposed her to people of many different classes, races, and sexual and gender identities, it makes sense that she would eventually adapt and embrace Leigh’s progressive world in 2020. But it seems much too easy. Nothing shocks her. There are no sticking points. Her practical adaptation takes time – she has to learn how to use an ATM, a cell phone, a coffee maker, etc. But her emotional adaptation happens with uncanny smoothness.

Further, the book keeps hinting at exciting things and then doesn’t deliver. Here’s Chloë telling just enough about an adventure to annoy me:

I would tell you the story of that night: How we escorted a ragtag band newly come from Harrisburg by train. How we took a wrong turn and had to scatter as leaves to the wind. How Leigh and I sheltered two brave young women at Cloughmore for over a week before we could take them to the Stills, to be passed north to New York.

 

I would tell you all of this, but I will not. The Twenty-first century does not deserve it. 

For crying out loud! We may not deserve it, but it’s cruel indeed to dangle an adventure like that in front of me and then take it away! 

Meanwhile, the cause of the temporal anomalies and the development and role of the Joint Temporal Integrity Commission are barely touched on. More time in both Chloë’s Civil War world and in Leigh’s 21st century world would have deepened this book considerably.

Chloë and Leigh are adorable together in any time period, and it was pleasant just hanging out with them, eating and thrift store shopping and talking. Their rapport is enjoyable and comfortable. Unfortunately, the story surrounding them isn’t gripping. The more exciting parts of Chloë and Leigh’s lives are behind them, and modern-day Chloë adapts so easily to modern life, including the loss of the previous Leigh, that I could never fully invest in her as a character. She does not seem real because she has unlikely responses to her situation. I found present-day Leigh to be more believable, but again I couldn’t stop feeling bad for the past Leigh, who lived the rest of her life alone. Overall, I was happy for 2020 Leigh and Chloë – but also bored.

I appreciated the fact that this book tackles time travel and reincarnation in an attempt to demonstrate that we have made progress over time but still have many problems. I needed to see a lot more of the past and the present, the history of the time travel phenomenon, and the emotional side of jumping through time. I loved the inclusive representation, but I wanted to know more about the characters’ lives. I liked Chloë and Leigh as a couple, but I needed more spark and more detail to stay interested in the story. It’s an interesting book but expansion would have made it extraordinary.