By Clara Thompson

Why, in my seventh decade, am I reading teen age historical novels? Because for my correspondence course in writing for children, I’ve decided my preferred readers would be girls like Janie, my 13-year-old granddaughter. I’m supposed to read as much as I can of the kind of writing I’d like to do so I’ve randomly picked several historical novels by Ann Rinaldi.

I wish this kind of writing had been around when I was 13. The novel I just finished, An Acquaintance with Darkness, described on its cover as "deliciously macabre," is a very skillful blend of history with imagination, set in Washington D.C. in 1865. The central character, Emily Pigbush, is 14 years old, nursing her mother until she dies of the "wasting disease" [tuberculosis]. Emily’s father was killed in the war. Emily thinks she is old enough to decide where she will live so she has arranged to stay with a girlfriend, Annie Surrat, and her mother. But Emily’s Uncle Valentine warns her against this decision.

Emily’s mother had taught her to sew well. So Emily finishes the dress her mother could not finish, a formal gown that Mrs. Abraham Lincoln will wear to the Ford Theater. Emily is thinking about Annie’s brother Johnny and about living with her friend’s family. Nothing happens the way she expects.

With the assassination of President Lincoln and the subsequent violent upheavals in Washington, Johnny escapes to Canada, Mrs. Surrat, at whose house John Wilkes Booth often stayed, is arrested and put in prison, and Emily with some resistance must move into her uncle’s house.

The vivid descriptions of life during that historical period, Uncle Valentine’s struggle as a doctor to treat patients as well as to carry on his research, Emily’s mental and emotional turmoil about suspicious activities of her uncle, her growing love for a young, lame medical student, her suffering at the hands of a classmate, all make for a fast moving and exciting story. Emily’s stubborn insistence on making serious mistakes from her own ignorance and immaturity put some tangles in the plot. A teenage girl would surely understand Emily’s predicaments and sympathize with her.

At the end of the book, Rinaldi adds some fascinating historical details, pointing out the characters she used who actually lived during that time and indicating where she created fictional characters like Emily and Uncle Valentine to flesh out the story. Mrs. Surrat and Dr. Samuel Mudd, who treated Booth’s broken leg after he shot Lincoln, neither of whom were conspirators, as well as others who were Booth’s supporters, all were actually hanged. The hanging itself is unforgettably included in Emily’s experiences.