It was a black December night in 1980. Trooper Earl Nicholson sped to the scene of a reported automobile accident. Arriving at the scene, Nicholson expected to see mangled steel and broken glass. Instead, he was met with the sight of a young woman dressed in pajamas – and a small, shirtless, boy – laying under a tree in the front yard of the house facing the street. Scanning the bodies with his flashlight beam, it was evident to the state trooper that the victims had died from multiple stab wounds. Leading away from the stiffening corpses were two frozen trails of blood – one in the direction of the front door, the other in the direction of the railroad crossing down the road. Nicholson radioed for back-up and cautiously made his way toward the house.
DARK SECRETS is the first book in a series based on the life of a farm girl born in 1908 when the United States was becoming a world leader, and farm families made up over half of the population. Conditions for the Negro had worsened, women rallied for the right to vote, and social change in music, dance, and fashion filtered into rural areas. This book shows prejudice faced by Negroes, Gypsies, Jews, and women of that era. The book begins with Ollie trying to get home after receiving a head injury in an attack by two boys—the same boys that she thinks raped her friend and murdered a girl in a nearby community. She remains in a coma for five days, recalling vivid events of her first fifteen years. Ollie is competitive and contends with schoolmates, and her older brother and sister, but is eager to help with younger …
Hess’s life story in itself makes for fascinating reading and D. Eric Sturdy has interwoven a fictional aspect into Hess’s biography and created a plausible story involving Britain’s MI6, America’s CIA, the Soviet KGB and the foremost politicians of the day.