A Latino bar in Toronto, 1978. The men can't take their eyes off Lisa, but there is something about her. She is a little too intense, a little too needy, a woman with too many games playing in her head. Don, a realtor with a murky South American past, is unfazed. He listens patiently when Lisa tells him she is looking for her father, a wealthy man living in Argentina. Or so she says. Determined to find her roots, Lisa goes to Argentina. It's a journey born of longing for love and the desperate need for something solid to hold on to. Don offers to come along. He is on a mission of his own, looking for his run-away daughter, Asu, a Quechua girl he adopted in Argentina. Or so he says. Soon Lisa acquires a second escort: Santos, a man with connections to the spirit world. He does seances with Lisa because only the saints can help her. Or so he says. Is Santos a charlatan, or a shaman fighting the eternal battle of good against evil? Lisa's search for her father dead-ends. Instead she finds love with Jim, an architect on foreign assignment in Argentina. A happy ending is in sight, when Lisa's life turns into a nightmare. She becomes a pawn in the deadly feud between Santos and Don over Asu. This is a twist on the old story of a young woman running an obstacle course of deception in her quest for love. Argentina in the 70s is a country where kidnapping and violent death no longer make headlines, a country where Lisa learns a new set of survival skills.

Erika Rummel has taught at the University of Toronto and WLU, Waterloo. She has lived in big cities (Los Angeles, Vienna) and small villaes in Argentina, Romania, and Bulgaria. She has written extensively on social history, translated the correspondence of inventor Alfred Nobel, the humanist Erasmus, and the Reformer Wolfgang Capito. She is the author of a number of historical novels, most recently The Road to Gesualdo and The Inquisitor's Niece, which was judged best historical novel of the year by the Colorado Independent Publishers' Association. In 2018 the Renaissance Society of America honoured her with a lifetime achievement award. She divides her time between living in Toronto and Santa Monica, California. The Loneliness of the Time Traveller is her eighth novel.

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