Commission for The Boston Globe. A book review Illustration for Kaliane Bradley’s novel, The Ministry of Time.

“And they are expats from…?” asks the soon-to-be bridge.

“History.”

“Sorry?”

Adela shrugged. “We have time travel,” she said, like someone describing a coffee machine. “Welcome to the Ministry.”

Our narrator has her hands full as a bridge to Graham Gore, a Royal Navy officer who had been part of the Franklin expedition to the Arctic, extracted from the year 1847. His colleagues include Margaret Kremble, a woman taken from a plague house in 1665; Thomas Cardingham, a Battle of Naseby lieutenant from 1645; an army captain, Arthur Reginald-Smyth, engaged in 1916’s Battle of the Somme; and Anne Spencer, a woman from 1793 Paris.