Walk Through Darkness (31 page)

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
Not only is
Walk Through Darkness
dedicated to my mother, Joan Scurlock, but I must also acknowledge how indebted I am to her for its very conception. This novel sprang from the research that she was doing into our own family’s history. She opened my eyes to the diversity of the American experience and challenged me to uncover and explore rarely acknowledged aspects of our troubled past. Thank you, Mom. Your work goes on.

My heartfelt appreciation also goes out to Marita Golden. Thank you for creating the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation over a decade ago and for being a source of guidance and inspiration ever since. If anyone hasn’t heard of the Hurston/Wright Foundation, please do check out their website. This organization supports, encourages, and challenges aspiring African American writers, thereby helping to positively influence the future of American literature.

I’d like to thank my editor, Debbie Cowell; my agent, Sloan Harris; and also Bill Thomas, Steve Rubin, and everyone else at
Doubleday. I appreciate not only the support they’ve shown for my first two books, but also for their willingness to dream of a future with me. Thanks to Jeffrey Lent and family for providing me with the necessary long conversations about novels, children, horses, and about generally staying sane while trying to make this writing life work. Also, my heartfelt thanks and love go out to everyone whom I call family. We’ve been through tough times this last year, and I will never forget the strength and wisdom you all showed. And, of course, I’d be nowhere without my wife, Gudrun, and kids, Maya and Sage. It’s also in them that my mother’s work goes on, now and forever.

While this work was inspired by real, rigorous historical research, the novel itself is a creation of my imagination. All the characters and events are completely fictional and the settings, such as Annapolis and Philadelphia, are used with the utmost respect. While I’ve done my best to ensure the accuracy of all historical details, I also accept the full responsibility for any errors. I won’t catalog all the titles that I consulted while writing this novel, but I will admit that as a fiction writer I steal unabashedly from the works of more disciplined scholars including James Hunter’s
A Dance Called America.
One title, more than any other, inspired key moments and plot points within this fiction:
Runaway Slaves,
by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger.

Copyright © 2002 by David Anthony Durham

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:
Durham, David Anthony, 1969–
Walk through darkness / David Anthony Durham.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. African American men—Fiction. 2. Separation (Psychology)—Fiction.
3. Fugitive slaves—Fiction. 4. Married people—Fiction. 5. Philadelphia (Pa.)—
Fiction. 6. Annapolis (Md.)—Fiction. 7. Psychological fiction. 8. Historical
fiction. I. Title
PS3554.U677 W35 2002
813′6—dc21
2001047673

eISBN: 978-0-307-56104-6

www.anchorbooks.com

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