| Household Gods | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Author | Harry Turtledove |
| Co-Author | Judith Tarr |
| Cover artist | Cynthia von Buhler |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Tor |
| Publication date | 1999 |
Household Gods is a fantasy novel of time-travel, written jointly by Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove.
The story focuses on Nicole Gunther, an American woman in the 1990s, who is dissatisfied with her hectic life, which includes balancing her career as a lawyer with being a mother and dealing with her deadbeat ex-husband and sexist coworkers. Believing the past was a better time, one evening, after a particularly wild day, she makes a wish before a plaque of two Roman gods, Liber and Libera. The next morning, she finds herself waking up in the body of one of her ancient ancestors, a taverner named Umma, in 2nd-century Carnuntum in what is now Austria. In general, she finds out the hard way that life in the past was not quite what she thought it would be: slavery taken for granted, no women's rights, no effective medicine or clean medical practices, and no tampons. Over the course of a year, she is forced to revise many of her long-held modern prejudices, including those against alcohol and corporal punishment. She survives epidemic disease and a Germanic invasion and finds that early Christianity was uncomfortably zealous and apocalyptic. Having succeeded in avoiding rape during months of living under barbarian occupation, she undergoes a brutal rape by a Roman soldier during the very moment of the city's "liberation" and gets to discuss the role of government and its duties to abused citizens with Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Eventually, Liber and Libera fulfill her desire to return home, where she wakes from a week-long 'coma' to find that, with her hard won skills and improved perspective, both her working and family life will improve and she can more easily deal with the stress and difficulties of her modern life. She retains memories which could never be shared with anybody and a thorough knowledge of the Latin language.
Related works[]
The book's plot has much in common with Gunpowder Empire, though that book concerns travel to an alternate Roman Empire which has survived into the late 21st Century. Both books depict the daily life of a provincial Roman city from the point of view of modern American(s) marooned there, and both deal prominently with such issues as facing a society where slavery is taken for granted, and surviving a foreign invasion of the Imperial territory.
"Death in Vesunna" deals with English-speaking people from the 21st century traveling back in time to a remote Roman province on purpose.
The middle act of Thessalonica chronicles a slice of daily life in a provincial town of the Eastern Roman Empire in AD 597.
The dedication page of Household Gods claims that the plot is based on an unused idea from the mind of Fletcher Pratt.
Characters from Household Gods are used with permission in S.M. Stirling's novel To Turn the Tide (2024), an alternate history with a Point of Divergence in AD 165, which features Marcus Aurelius as a POV. Chapter Twenty features brief appearances by Titus Calidius Severus, Gaius Calidius Severus, Umma, Julia, Aurelia, and Lucius. Umma and Julia are named, with the rest being clearly recognizable. In his foreword, Stirling implies that Nicole Gunther appears, however the story makes clear that the taverner is the real, uneducated Umma. The scene takes place on November 5, 166, four years before Nicole's arrival.
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