I want to thank my husband, Ross Hugo-Vidal, who heroically sat through every children’s movie made in the summer of ’04 in order to give me time and space to write. If it weren’t for Ross, this book would still be a large pile of index cards.
Thanks to my children, Victoria, Spencer, and Virginia, for taking their mother’s erratic working hours and long absences during book tours in stride. I owe a debt of gratitude to everyone at St. Martin’s Press, especially my editor, Ruth Cavin, who helped me shape a huge stack of manuscript into the story I wanted to tell, and to Toni Plummer, who dealt with my raving phone calls with humor and good grace.
If any of you aspiring authors out there wonder if an agent is worth his fee, the answer is yes, yes, a thousand times yes, in the case of Jimmy Vines and his hardworking assistant Alexis.
Several people read To Darkness and to Death in manuscript form, and their suggestions made it a much better book. Thanks to Roxanne Eflin; my parents, John and Lois Fleming; Ellen Pyle; and Mary Weyer. Several other people gave me food, drink, and a place to stay while I roamed about the country talking about my books: Thank you, James and Robin Agnew; Evonne, Dan, and Michelle McNabb; Daniel and Barbara Scheeler; May Lou Wright and Judy Bobalik. And thanks, as ever, to Les Smith, for giving me a longing to inquire into the mystery.
The Day Is Gently Sinking to a Close
—Christopher Wordsworth, 1863
The day is gently sinking to a close,
Fainter and yet more faint the sunlight glows:
O Brightness of Thy Father’s glory,
Thou eternal Light of light, be with us now:
Where Thou art present darkness cannot be;
Midnight is glorious noon, O Lord, with Thee.
Our changeful lives are ebbing to an end;
Onward to darkness and to death we tend;
O Conqueror of the grave, be Thou our Guide;
Be Thou our Light in death’s dark eventide;
Then in our mortal hour will be no gloom,
No sting in death, no terror in the tomb.
Thou, Who in darkness walking didst appear
Upon the waves, and Thy disciples cheer,
Come, Lord, in lonesome days, when storms assail,
And earthly hopes and human succors fail;
When all is dark, may we behold Thee nigh,
And hear Thy voice, “Fear not, for it is I.”
The weary world is moldering to decay,
Its glories wane, its pageants fade away:
In that last sunset, when the stars shall fall,
May we arise, awakened by Thy call,
With Thee, O Lord, forever to abide,
In that blest day which has no eventide.