Dark Deception

Lawrence Pratt

Summary

Dark Deception is an emotionally engaging and thought-provoking work that centers around a closely-knit trio of women who come to depend on one another as they attempt to live meaningful lives in a authoritarian, faith-based community. The forces their families, friendship, and others in the community exert on the three don't always work in harmony and they limited freedom addressing issues large and small. The lives of the three and other various characters unfold in a tapestry of emotions and encounters as they attempt to deal with the demands of a restrictive faith that tolerates no loyal opposition. The book's characters – both within and outside the faith – meld and collide in a series of encounters that involve family, love, betrayal, and a quest for power and control.
 
While based on the author's personal experiences, Dark Deception is more than a fictional adaptation of a period in his life when authority and freedom were often at odds. The text examines many of the complexities of contemporary American life, particularly in regards to authoritarian institutions and their impact on women.
 
In addition to the three primary protagonists, in Dark Deception, the reader is brought into the world of several women at crossroads in their lives including a young college student yearning for independence, another forced into a dogma-dictated marriage after becoming pregnant by an outsider, and a third who finds herself trapped like a bird in a gilded cage.
 
It seems almost ironic timing that the author completed his final edit of the text at the end of a year that found the country's major political and religious institutions attempting to dictate their various views to the female gender.
 
Throughout Dark Deception, as in life, each individual must choose how she or he deals with the demands of tribal membership – acceptance, departure, or death.

Available since: 11/20/2012.

Contemporary Fiction

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