The Darkest Light

THE DARKEST LIGHT

When the hole was waist-deep I pulled the body in . . .

Huck was just fourteen years old when the Eradication began. Now, living half his life in a prison work camp and the other half in his boyhood home where his family are all but ghosts, Huck is struck by not only new ideas and new suspicions, but a strange power. Will he become their savior or their weapon? Will the choice be his?

Here, in a new and exciting novel by the author of The Ghost Yard, Christopher Knight thrusts us into a plague-shaken world of corruption and darkness and power, where miracles are rumored, and where shadows offer The Darkest Light.

Even years after the country has been ravaged by a devastating plague, the inmate-workers at Base 13 are not safe. Superstition runs rampant. The forests can only be sparingly hunted because the plague continues to poison the wildlife. Just hours after one worker collapses, a second is executed as fears of a fresh outbreak are renewed. One worker, Huck, who enjoys the envious freedom of returning home each night while the others are confined to barracks, has to wrestle with a deadly and illegal secret-his family is ill. To make matters worse, Huck finds himself an object of suspicion after he questions the "routine" injections being administered to the workers. He locks horns with one soldier and his return home is in peril . . . but he makes it.

Then, hours after a secret burial, Huck learns that even more workers-and their families-have been killed. Panic overwhelms the leaders at Base 13 and Huck discovers himself shackled in a strange dungeon-with one of the guards. Can he muster the courage to make a final stand, providing his fellow inmates a long-awaited chance at freedom? Can he survive their interrogation, their demand for answers and access to the sudden power he is only just learning to wield? Even if the fight can be made, what will be the ultimate cost . . . and can he pay it?

In Christopher Knight's terrifying novel, The Darkest Light, questions of life and death are not only raised but heightened . . . because it is not only a man's life at stake but the quest for his very soul.