The Once and Future Me

An amnesiac is either a time traveler or a hallucinating schizophrenic in Pace’s suspenseful if somewhat overstuffed debut. When the narrator wakes in 1954 Virginia at Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital, she can’t recall who she is or why she’s there. Though she’s wearing the patient ID of someone named Dorothy Frasier, the wisecracking voice in her head insists she’s neither Dorothy nor a patient. After a fight lands her in seclusion, the woman unexpectedly journeys to 2035, where “nerds” insist she’s a soldier named Bix searching the past for means to cure a deadly virus. Back in 1954, doctors deem the narrator delusional, a diagnosis she reluctantly accepts when a man identified as Dorothy’s husband visits the hospital and she recognizes him. Despite undergoing electroshock therapy, however, the narrator keeps returning to the future; either she’s truly Bix, or Dorothy is destined for a lobotomy. The sci-fi aspects of the plot are at once overcomplicated and underexplained, but the harrowing hospital scenes ground the proceedings and spotlight science’s historical mistreatment of “inconvenient” women. There’s enough here to hold adventurous thriller fans’ attention. (Aug.)