An Acquaintance with Darkness by Ann Rinaldi

An Acquaintance with Darkness by Ann Rinaldi

Ann Rinaldi has written many books for young teenagers, she is an Award winning author who writes stories of American history and makes them become real to the readers. She has written many other books such as… A Break with Charity, A Ride into Morning, and Cast two Shadows, etc. She was born in New York City on August 27, 1934. In 1979, at the age of 45, she finished her first book.

An Acquaintance with Darkness by Ann Rinaldi is about Emily Bransby, a 14-year old girl living in Washington DC at the time that President Lincoln was assassinated, when slaves we're being freed and people were all going crazy from all of the new changes going on. Her mother has just died and her best friend's mother is jailed for taking a part in Lincoln's murder. Because her father is also dead, Emily is forced to live with her mother's hated brother, Uncle Valentine, who is a doctor with a secret. Emily has to decide how much she's willing to risk for her uncle. An Acquaintance with Darkness was a good (yet sometimes boring) book, well written with a good twist in the end.

Emily was lying in bed when all of a sudden she heard a loud knock on her door in the middle of the night. She went to go see who it was and fortunately it was her good old friend Johnny Surrat whom she hadn't seen in a long time, Johnny had said he was away on business, well he came in and he talked to her and asked how her and her mom were surviving since their slave had been set free before President Lincolns death. He gave her twenty gold pieces and said he was on an important mission and that he didn't know when he would be back. Emily lived with her mother who was dying. And she took care of her mother till the day she died. When her mother died at first she was kind of relieved that it was all over…yet she really missed her mom. Before her mother had died, her mother told her whatever she did not to go live with her uncle but her uncle somehow got legal custody of her. And she was sent to go live with him. Her uncle said that he was a doctor and he had many patients…that would come to his house and he would help many people and she always wondered why her mom hated him so much he seemed like a good man.