An Acquaintance with Darkness

This is a book that takes place just as the Civil War ends. Mary, who is 14, has a very sick mother who dies before long. There is her Uncle, who wants her to come and live with him, and her dear friend Annie, whose mother is willing to have her live with them.

Annie's mother is Mary Surratt who was friend with John Wilkes Booth, who later went on to assassinate President Lincoln.

So that's one theme; the assassination of Lincoln, how the people in Washington reacted, the search for Booth and his accomplices, Mary's friendship with Annie, and the arrest of Annie's mother, her trial, and her execution.

The second theme in the book deals with the activities of Uncle Valentine, Mary's relative. She ends up having to live with him, but begins to think he may have a dark secret. It is possible that he is involved in a corpse-stealing racket, where bodies of people freshly dead are dug up from graves and sold to various medical people, schools, etc, to be used in anatomy lessons. Such an activity was, without doubt, utterly illegal, but defended by some on the premise that by studying the dead bodies, treatment of medical problems in living people could be bettered.

So May has to figure out whether or not her Uncle, and a friend of hers, is involved in this, or if she is mistaking what she sees. She's having to deal with this at the same time she is trying to help Annie through her mother's trial. That's a lot to put on a young girl's shoulders.

The book is based on factual events, and the author has a section at the end where she discusses body-snatching of the times. The book, though, begs for a discussion on when it is proper to disobey the laws if, by the disobedience of the laws, one is serving the better good of the many. The whole civil rights movement, for example, was based on disobedience of unfair and utterly prejudicial laws that existed in order to advance the cause of equal rights for everyone.

So this becomes a discussion that parents could have with their children after they have read the book.

Thus, the book is not only well done, but is very thought-provoking as well.

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