Dark Deception

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.

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.

A native of San Francisco's North Bay area, my first twenty years were spent in a couple of small cities in which I never had the slightest inclination to stay. Motivated by mediocre grades at the local junior college and the threat of military conscription in the late-60s, I enlisted in the Navy, left town, and never looked back. A marriage with two children, fourteen years of military aviation, and a couple of degrees later, the Family Pratt landed in Silicon Valley. A technical writer and trainer by trade, over the past several years I’ve ventured out of the cubicle with my freelance baby steps taken in the world of travel and local interest articles. With several small but satisfying successes, I continued in this genre and branched out into the tougher world of short stories. My single success here was with The Dan River Anthology in 2008. A series of writing classes and workshops as well as membership in the California Writers Club have accompanied me on my writing journey. My academic credentials in the world of writing are far from stellar and include a C+ grade average through high school English and needing to repeat English 1A at the local junior college. No, there’s no MFA in my resume. I thank Mrs. Cline from junior high English composition and grammar for teaching me the essentials of writing something that can be read and understood. Dark Deception is my plunge into the realm of the novel and represents a portion of my life from 1974 to 1986 that I always felt needed an outlet. It was a time when life went from the well-ordered – often by someone else – to a life of unlimited choices. After a multi-year effort, I was able to set to words the story I wanted to tell the way I wanted to tell it.