Walk Through Darkness
Meinrad Craighead (Illustration) and Gudrun Johnst New York: Doubleday, 2002. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. [10], 291, [3] pages. Minor sticker residue on back of DJ. Inscribed by the author on the half-title page. Inscription reads To Akbar & Virginia. Thank you. david. Also signed Durham on the title page. David Anthony Durham (born March 23, 1969) is an American novelist, author of historical fiction and fantasy. Durham's first novel, Gabriel's Story, centered on African American settlers in the American West. Walk Through Darkness followed a runaway slave during the tense times leading up to the American Civil War. Pride of Carthage focused on Hannibal Barca of Ancient Carthage and his war with the Roman Republic. His novels have twice been New York Times Notable Books, won two awards from the American Library Association, and been translated into eight foreign languages. In 2016, Durham returned to historical fiction with the publication of The Risen: A Novel of Spartacus. After receiving an MFA from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1996, he taught at the University of Maryland and University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Writer at The Colorado College and was an associate professor at Cal State University, Fresno and an adjunct professor at Hampshire College. He won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Fiction Award in 1992, the 2002 Legacy Award for Debut Fiction and was a Finalist for the 2006 Legacy Award for Fiction. In 2009, he won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He was an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Nevada, Reno before leaving to write for television. The second novel by the acclaimed author of Gabriel's Story, Walk Through Darkness is a story of history infused by myth, the intense narrative of an escaped slave trying to reunite with his pregnant wife. Walk Through Darkness is the story of two very different men, each on a quest, both tied together by a history of remorse, jealousy, and a love that crosses the barriers of race during the time of slavery. William, a fugitive slave from Maryland, is driven by two powerful needs--to find his wife, Dover, who is pregnant with his child, and to live as a free man. He undertakes the treacherous journey north to restore meaning to his life, putting him at odds with the law and the sentiments of a nation. Morrison, who fled a painful youth in Scotland, had once hoped to establish a new life in America with his brother, but the unforeseen realities of immigrant life drove them apart. As David Anthony Durham traces the physical and spiritual journeys of William, Dover, and Morrison he captures in rich, evocative detail the events and the landscape of America just before the turmoil of the Civil War. Interweaving tragedy and hardship with a profound understanding of enduring love and the desire for freedom. Walk Through Darkness is a complex story that is uniquely American, reflecting the tortured nature of the country's bloodlines and uncovering the deep bonds, and wounds, that exist across racial lines. This is a well-wrought work of "fiction in history" that follows two very different American men's paths to freedom, and places a difficult part of our nation's history under a magnifying glass to search for something beyond pain. In the end, it also presents a new possibility for healing -- for the characters, and for the larger racial divide that still haunts the United States. Building on the strengths of his extraordinary debut, Durham opens the reader's eyes anew to the eternal odyssey to find a home and identity in America. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: African-American, Fugitive Slave, Wife, Pregnant, Freedom, Tragedy, Hardship, Bloodlines, Racism, Healing, Home, Identity, Immigrant, Scotland
ISBN: 0385499256
[Book #84937]
Price: $125.00