The Mirk and Midnight Hour
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4.1 • 7 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A Gothic thriller and captivating love story set in Civil War Mississippi
Seventeen-year-old Violet Dancey has been left at home in Mississippi with a laudanum-addicted stepmother and love-crazed stepsister while her father fights in the war—a war that has already claimed her twin brother. When she comes across a severely injured Union soldier lying in an abandoned lodge deep in the woods, things begin to change. Thomas is the enemy—one of the men who might have killed her own brother—and yet she’s drawn to him. But Violet isn’t Thomas’s only visitor. Someone has been tending to his wounds—keeping him alive—and it becomes chillingly clear that this care hasn’t been out of compassion. Against the dangers of war and threatening powers of voodoo, Violet fights to protect her home, her family, and the man she’s begun to love.
“An exciting story—juicy, romantic and at times quite chilling.” —BookPage
“An atmospheric story in which darkness houses mysteries, [with] rich imagery and imaginative subplots.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Compelling. . . . There’s a languid ease to the prose that invites readers to become fully immersed.” —The Bulletin
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As if it isn't enough that Violet's twin brother was killed in the Civil War, her family's quiet Mississippi farm is changing in every way possible: before enlisting, her father remarries, giving Violet both an invalid stepmother and a spoiled stepsister, and he also agrees to take in Violet's young cousin, Seeley. Adding more complications are the mysterious Doctor VanZeldt and his African companions, as well as a wounded Union soldier tucked away in the woods. Nickerson's Strands of Bronze and Gold retold the Bluebeard story in antebellum Mississippi; this is a version of the Scottish tale of Tam Lin, with the fairy folk and their magic replaced by the VanZeldt's voodoo. Tomboyish Violet's interactions with Seeley and the Union soldier are charming, but Nickerson overburdens the book with plot, and the Civil War setting ends up an odd combination of special pleading (Violet is an unusually enlightened slave holder) and stereotype (the Africans are often described as moving with a feral grace), making for an overwrought jumble of the domestic and the fantastic. Ages 14 up.
