“Hannah is an indefatigable caretaker and an irresistible protagonist.” – Publishers Weekly

Imperiled innocence

Cancer survivor Hannah Ives looked death in the eye … and walked away.  But the terror she once felt in its shadow pales before the ice-cold fear that now grips her heart in the wake of an unthinkable crime: the kidnapping of her innocent grandson.

One-year-old Tim vanished from the day care center at the upscale spa his parents recently opened, and the lack of a ransom note suggests the child may have fallen into the hands of the worst sort of fiend.  Hannah will find no peace until the boy is found and his abductor punished.  She cannot even take comfort in the caring words of a dear friend and spiritual advisor—nor notice that this confidant’s own life and marriage may be haunted by something dark and sinister.  But the hunt leads Hannah back to places she never dreamed she’d have to go.

Avon Books

On Sale August 29, 2006

ISBN: 0060587415

$6.99 US/$9.99 Can.

www.marciatalley.com

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Publicity Contact:  Danielle Bartlett, 212-207-7011, danielle.bartlett@harpercollins.com

Finding My Way Through the Darkness

by Marcia Talley

Some of the best plot ideas sneak up on me while on vacation.  I was sunning on Waikiki, for example, when my husband tossed a copy of Forbes Magazine onto my lap and insisted that I read an article entitled “Death Wish” that discussed the pitfalls of investing in viaticals—when a person with a serious illness sells his or her life insurance policy death benefit at a discount to an agent who in turn sells it to investors. My fourth novel, In Death’s Shadow (Avon, 2004) was the result.

Similarly, we were visiting friends in California on a day trip to Carmel by the Sea, where I picked up a copy of the local newspaper, a freebie called The Pine Cone.  An upscale Methodist church congregation was in turmoil, because the husband of its popular minister had been caught outside a toy store, sitting in his BMW with, as the article put it, both his license plates and his pants off.  The husband had prior convictions for indecent exposure, and although the minister herself had done nothing wrong, she eventually resigned for the spiritual health of her church. 

How unfair, I thought, and how sad.  I had already begun writing Through the Darkness, where my heroine, Hannah Ives, was dealing with the kidnapping of her infant grandson, an event that would naturally send her to her minister for spiritual support.  Why couldn’t that minister be a woman, I reasoned, battling personal demons of her own? So Pastor Eva Haberman was born, priest at St. Catherine’s Episcopal Church, married to Roger, with secrets of his own.

Then real life intervened once again.  On November 4, I was home watching a Dateline NBC segment called “To Catch a Predator,” when one of my neighbors – a pediatrician! – strolled into the sting house and onto my television screen.  When I could breathe again, I went to my computer to check out Perverted-Justice.com, the organization that cooperated with NBC in producing the segment. There I learned more than I ever wanted to know about the man who lived five houses down the street from me, including transcripts of the internet chats and the web cam photos he’d shared with the twelve-year-old boy he thought he’d be having sex with the night he met the NBC cameras instead.

At once I knew that poor Roger Haberman would get caught in a similar sting operation, and I knew just the vigilante for the job, Erica Rose, a Baltimore attorney who had won the right to a character in my next novel by being the highest bidder at a charity auction.

As I wrote Through the Darkness, I learned that whatever wonders the Internet brings into our homes, it can also be a dangerous place for children. As part of my research, I created an identity as a thirteen-year-old girl, logged into a regional chat room, and hung around.  In less than ten minutes, “Candy” was receiving sexually explicit private messages.

But I also learned about the organizations – sadly, almost all of them rising out of crushing personal tragedy – that work tirelessly to help make the world a safer place for our kids -- the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, America’s Most Wanted, Laura Recovery Center, The Polly Klaas Foundation, and The Jimmy Ryce Center for Victims of Predatory Abduction, to name only a few.  With their help, more stories, like Hannah’s, will have a happy ending.