Story Behind The Book
The mind is a beautiful thing. It can be a restful place to retreat at the end of a long, hard day, and at times be absolutely overflowing with joyful thoughts, imagination and wonderment. It can also be a dark and lonely imprisonment, full of terrible sadness laced with incoherent ramblings, and impossible delusions of grandeur. Bipolar disorder affects approximately 5.7 million adults in America. Of these persons, nearly half of them will try to commit suicide at least once in their lifetime. Women however, may attempt it two to three times. These statistics alone are a heartbreaking fact - but add a name or a face of a family member to it, and it becomes devastating. Mental illness not only touches those who have it - it consumes their loved ones as well, leaving a haunting impression long after they are gone. In Seasons of Darkness, I explore the dynamics of one fictional family living with such an aftermath. Everett Harrington, a no-nonsense businessman, should have taken Natalia's behavior that night as a sign of things to come, but hadn't. When it came to her, he found himself unable to think clearly. It was on a scorching afternoon in late July that he had stood at the altar with her, making a promise in front of God and her parents to love her for better or for worse - and it was ten years later, on a rainy morning in September that he'd buried her. The days in between had been filled with brief intervals of happiness...and long periods of hopelessness. Now, left alone to raise a son he can't talk to and a daughter that he wants nothing to do with, he chooses to spend his evenings drowning his frustrations in a bottle of scotch, leaving him without the ability to control his temper. Forced to grow up in a hurry, nine-year-old Ethan Harrington quickly learned to build a wall around his heart, vowing never to let it be hurt again. Now sixteen, and still ravaged by his mother's death, he struggles to live among the shattered remains of a family that was never functional to begin with. As Ethan and Everett try to move on, Natalia's life is tenderly told through their eyes in vivid flashbacks that weaves throughout the book. A story of hope - even in the darkest of times, this is a coming-of-age novel that depicts the sometimes difficult and oftentimes complex relationship experienced between father and son when tragedy strikes.