The Between: Novel, A

Amazon.com Review Multiple time-lines and alternate branching destinies are more often associated with science fiction than horror, but in this first novel by an African-American woman, a man who has cheated death finds that his ability to walk through doorways in time brings dark forces into his life. Due employs a lucid, almost stately, prose style to evoke an escalating sense of menace toward a middle-class American family with connections to Ghana. Dreams? Madness? Ghosts? A racist killer? What is happening to these people? From Publishers Weekly Although set largely in the black and Hispanic communities of Florida's Dade County, Due's first novel, a skillful blend of horror and the supernatural, poses questions about life and identity that transcend racial boundaries. Thirty years after he was saved from drowning by the beloved grandmother who died in his place, Hilton James has built a secure middle-class life for his African American family and saved a few lives himself through his social work in Miami's inner city. His comfortable existence is shattered when his wife, a judge, begins receiving racist death threats and he starts having nightmares of alternate life experiences so authentic that they begin to loosen his grip on reality. Is Hilton a latent schizophrenic, as his therapist thinks? Or are the dreams and death threats both signs of a cosmic scheme in which Hilton is meant to accept the death that he eluded before? The mystical explanation Due posits for Hilton's predicament, involving "travelers," or persons who unconsciously use dreams as "doorways" to elude fate and live in "the between" world, is not nearly as disturbing as her depiction of Hilton's gradual decline from caring husband and father to a man who lashes out in frustration against those he loves. Her sympathetic and credible portrait of Hilton as a man discomposed by his encounter with the unknown compensates for the novel's underdeveloped supporting cast. Due also subtly suggests the horrifying thought that pervades the story but is left tactfully unspoken: if each of us creates our own reality, then ultimately we are all alone in the world. $25,000 ad/ promo; author tour. U.K. and translation rights, HarperCollins; other rights, Marie Brown Associates. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

When Hilton was just a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake.

When Hilton's wife, the only elected African-American judge in Dade County, FL, begins to receive racist hate mail, he becomes obsessed with protecting his family. Soon, however, he begins to have horrible nightmares, more intense and disturbing than any he has ever experienced. Are the strange dreams trying to tell him something? His sense of reality begins to slip away as he battles both the psychotic threatening to destroy his family and the even more terrifying enemy stalking his sleep. Chilling and utterly convincing, The Between follows the struggles of a man desperately trying to hold on to the people and life he loves, but may have already lost. The compelling plot holds readers in suspense until the final, profound moment of resolution.

darkecho.com - A Guran

Ms. Due has written a haunting first novel that layers the world that is with worlds that might be. Elements of suspense, Ghanaian folk legend, ghost tales, and a family love story are braided into a suspenseful rope that pulls one readily along.

Deftly handling components of an all-too-true-to-life racist psycho, the protagonist's warning and mind-destroying vision-dreams, and a convincing set of characters, the author holds one's attention with a sure style and fast-moving plot. I read its 271 pages straight through in one sitting.

In The Between, the reader is clued in almost immediately that Hilton James' brushes with finality as a child were in no way final and that we are dealing with alternatives to the present reality that he must somehow accept in order to save his family. His struggle to understand what is happening to him and to protect his family are compelling.

The book's characterization of even minor characters is believeable. For those who would like instruction in how to portray a strong non central female character, the author's DeeDee James is a fine example. The two children in the story are a bit too good to be true, but they still manage to be more realistic than most novelized kids.

The Between frightens us because we believe, from the very beginning, that this can and/or did happen. It is a notable debut by an author who is worth hearing from again.

“An extraordinary work of humane imagination . . . call it magic realism with soul.”—Locus“Finely honed . . . always engages and frequently surprises.”—New York Times Book ReviewA man risks his soul and his sanity to save his family from malevolent forces in this brilliant novel of horror and the supernatural from the award-winning pioneer of speculative fiction and author of the classic My Soul to Keep. When Hilton was a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake. When Hilton's wife, the only elected African American judge in Dade County, Florida, begins to receive racist hate mail from a man she once prosecuted, Hilton becomes obsessed with protecting his family. The demons lurking outside are matched by his internal terrors—macabre nightmares, more intense and disturbing than any he has ever experienced. Are these bizarre dreams the dark imaginings of a man losing his hold on sanity—or are they harbingers of terrible events to come? As Hilton battles both the sociopath threatening to destroy his family and the even more terrifying enemy stalking his sleep, the line between reality and fantasy dissolves . . . Chilling and utterly convincing, The Between is the haunting story of a man desperately trying to hold on to the people and life he loves as he slowly loses himself. The effect on an a black family of racist death threats. They are sent to the mother, a judge in Miami, but it is the husband who is most affected. Already unstable because of a near-drowning in childhood, the threats provoke in him nightmares and anger which he takes out on his family. A first novel Thirty years after his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him, Hilton becomes alarmed when his prosecutor wife begins receiving racist hate mail and Hilton starts experiencing troublesome nightmares