Jamey Cohen is a female writer, who, from what I can garner from research, only published two books, this one and Night Chasers. Because she wrote this during her senior year at Harvard while studying Russian History and Hypnosis, the main character is Dmitri Ivanovich, a 9 year old boy who is a descendent of Ivan the Terrible and heir to the Russian throne in the 16th century. He has less than a week to live, unless he can find a way to escape the assassin's blade. Then, it brings in the character John Greene in the 20th century who is about to participate in a hypnosis experiment. The experiment, however, is about to catapult John into a terrifying battle for his very existence. Under hypnosis, he is caught in a lethal conflict with a boy long-dead.