An Acquaintance with Darkness by Ann Rinaldi

As Emily later figures out, Valentine, Marietta, Robert, and Maude are involved in body snatching (cadaver theft) in Washington.Įmily is at first disgusted by Valentine's deeds. She also meets Robert deGraaf, Valentine's medical student. Emily meets Valentine's assistant, Marietta, his housekeeper, Maude, and Maude's dwarf husband, Merry. Living with Uncle Valentine, Emily learns that Valentine is actually quite a talented doctor who strives for more discoveries in the medical field with the changing times.

On Annie's advice, Emily reluctantly goes to live with her uncle, Dr. Mary Surratt, Annie's mother, comes under suspicion of the authorities, as she may have harbored Booth Johnny Surrat is also wanted by the police for possibly being involved in the assassination. But then, on April 15, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in Ford Theatre. Soon, Emily's mother dies after hearing that the Civil War was over. Emily's mother's only wish is that Emily at all costs not live with her uncle, Dr. However, Emily sometimes has the help of her close friend, sixteen-year-old Annie Surratt and Annie's brother Johnny a twenty-year-old, whose mother runs the boarding house across the street.Įmily's mother is near death, and Emily hopes to go live with Annie afterward her mother dies because her father has died in a battle of Charleston. Now the Pigbushes' final servant, Ella May, has left because she was freed, leaving Emily to care for her mother alone. Emily's father died during the Civil War while fighting for the Union. An Acquaintance with Darkness is the story of 14-year-old Emily Pigbush who lives with her mother in Washington, D.C., in 1865.

An Acquaintance with Darkness by Ann Rinaldi