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Back When Darkness Loves Us Save as PDF
Chapters (56)
  1. CoverImage
  2. Title page
  3. Copyright page
  4. Introduction by Grady Hendrix
  5. Foreword by Theodore Sturgeon
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. WHEN DARKNESS LOVES US
  8. Part One
  9. 1
  10. 2
  11. 3
  12. 4
  13. 5
  14. 6
  15. Part Two
  16. 1
  17. 2
  18. 3
  19. 4
  20. 5
  21. 6
  22. 7
  23. 8
  24. Part Three
  25. 1
  26. 2
  27. 3
  28. 4
  29. BEAUTY IS ...
  30. 1
  31. 2
  32. 3
  33. 4
  34. 5
  35. 6
  36. 7
  37. 8
  38. 9
  39. 10
  40. 11
  41. 12
  42. 13
  43. 14
  44. 15
  45. 16
  46. 17
  47. 18
  48. 19
  49. 20
  50. 21
  51. 22
  52. 23
  53. 24
  54. 25
  55. About the Author
  56. About the Cover

Later, on the mainland, we got a look at Beauty Is . . . Our immediate reaction was to get it launched. The two stories together made a generous-enough bookful but they were not connected in any way. Betsy said I was crazy but I said, “Do it.” Her able agent said I was crazy but I said, “Do it.” Her publisher probably thought the same . . . but the publisher did it.

And now I envy you, and anyone else who has not, but who is about to, meet Elizabeth Engstrom. Behind that soft-voiced style is power, is surprise, is—well, that ferocity I mentioned. You are now introduced.

Theodore Sturgeon

Oregon, 1984

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A writer needs sustenance in many ways during differing phases of a work. Of these, I believe, dialogue is the most nourishing. I have been fortunate.

Lifeblood was contributed by Clarice Cox, Ted and Jayne Sturgeon, Maggie Doran, Madge Walls, Marie Johnson, Tonia Baney, and Shelley Nalepa, to name only a few.

Thanks to John Briley for accuracy, Sandra Dijkstra for direction, and to Ted Sturgeon for the right hug at the right time.

And a note of specific gratitude to my folks, for teaching me that molds are for plastic.

WHEN DARKNESS LOVES US

WHEN DARKNESS LOVES US

Part One

PART ONE

1

1

Sally Ann Hixson, full with the blush of spring and gleeful playfulness as only sixteen-year-olds know it, hid around the side of the huge tree at the edge of the woods as the great tractor drove past her. She saw her husband, torso bare, riding the roaring monster, his smooth muscles gliding under sweat-slick skin tanned a deep brown. She didn’t want him to see her . . . not yet.

She plopped down into the long grass, feeling the rough bark of the big tree against her back as she gazed into the woods. This had been her favorite place to play when she was little. She could just barely see her parents’ house on the hill about a mile off. Her mother had noticed her restlessness as soon as the major canning was done and sent her away to run, to play, to spy on her new husband as he worked with her father in the fields.