The first of a series about time travelers who go back in time and make selected children immortal (the process only works on children). These people are then tasked with preserving and caching fortunes, great works of art, extinct animals and plants, that sort of thing, for the future. The story is about a Spanish child (Mendoza) who is immortalized, trained as a botanist, and at the ripe old age of about-19 inserted into Tudor England to preserve extinct plants. The religious upheavals of the time, her love affair with a local, and the difficulty of living a double life combine to push this book towards a sobering ending. This is the kind of book I really sought out when I was younger but I thought I had grown out of. But Baker writes so well--lyrically and wittily, with appropriate depth--that this enchanted my adult self as well. This is the first of "The Company" series and you may be sure I will read all of them.