A Love Beyond Forever by Diana Haviland is the story of a woman who buys an antique hand mirror which transports her on a journey into the past and to the man of her dreams.

Kristy Sinclair did not really want to buy the scrying mirror but it was a bargain and she soon found it in her possession.

While working in England she takes the mirror with her, and at the request of a young girl at the village inn she is staying at, she tries her hand at scrying.

But while she seeks the a young man to please young Morag she finds instead the face of the man who has haunted her dreams.

Scared and unsure what is happening Kristy soon finds that her mirror is not showing the future, but rather the past, and even more frightening she is now trapped in the past and on the run from Cromwell's witch hunters.

Her only friend is Jared Ramsey, a smuggler and spy for the exiled Charles II.  But even Jared is not sure just who it is he has rescued from the witch hunters, he only knows that he is drawn to her as he has been to no other woman.

Jared Ramsey, fifth Earl of Ravenswyck had been forced to leave his home and lost his titles during the Civil War.  He had also seen the woman he was to marry bound in wedlock to a high ranking puritan.  Trusting few and always cautious Jared cannot confide in Kristy, a woman who seems to know nothing about everyday happenings and is far to outspoken for her own safety.  But since she does not seem to realise the danger she is in he takes her out of the village they are in and north to a friend's estate where she will be safe while he is overseas.

Kristy on the other hand has other plans and now that she has found the man of her dreams she does not intend to let him get away from her, even if she has to follow him overseas.

I found this novel very good in the way it recreated life in Cromwell's England.  However there were also a couple of points that disappointed me.

I felt that the witchcraft storyline was rather over the top.  While witchcraft can be used as a useful explanation for the travelling through time, in this case I felt it began to intrude on the story and I really did not understand which time Kristy's parents lived in.  Her father and mother appeared to be from the future, but her mother's coven seemed to be based in the past.  This never seemed very consistent.

I also felt that the relationship between Jared and Kristy developed too quickly.  While love at first sight is often a factor in these books, in this case it did not seem to be entirely appropriate.

On the whole I was rather disappointed in this novel which is set in one of my favourite time periods.  I think that with more history and less witchcraft this novel could have been much better, but in the end the witchcraft seemed to take over the story and the romance was lost somewhere on the way.

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Also by Diana Haviland:  The Passionate Pretenders and Witchcraft U.S.A.