BETWEEN DAYLIGHT AND DARK

Beginning eight years after the Ludlow Massacre (as chronicled in The Red-Winged Blackbird), Between Daylight and Dark reveals the rambunctious young life of Llewelyn Broiles Tanner—true descendant of the Colorado coal fields —as told to daughter Mary Susan.  The flu pandemic of 1918, WW I and II on the home front, the Depression and Dust Bowl, Hollywood in the late 30s, even—Lulu experiences them all—while becoming a damned fine rancher, inveterate coddiwompler and gimlet-eyed observer of the American scene. As one reviewer put it, “Between Daylight and Dark takes the reader on an exciting journey from the end of the Great War through depression, dust bowls and WWII, skillfully developing such grand characters as Lulu, Su-Su, Clem and Ettie as they make their way from Colorado to Texas, with a short, but memorable detour in Hollywood, proving once again that the dark of the past only makes the light of the future so much brighter. A most enjoyable book - dialog superb.”

 BACKSTORY: As the title indicates, Between Daylight and Dark offers a significant transition between tcoal strikes, massacres and revenge in the Southeastern Colorado of 1910-1914 to the deceptively tame atmosphere of Empyrean, Texas in 1983 (as depicted in Book 3: Glitches)—a transition from darkness to daylight in setting, style, subject matter, characterization and theme. The title of Book 2 comes directly from an old Texas expression, which voices a glaring disparity between one thing, person or circumstance and another. “Why it’s the difference between daylight and dark,” my mom or dad would say when they wanted to stress some obvious contrast. The darkness of coal mines, world wars, the Depression and the Dust Bowl versus the light of better days; the glaring light of city streets versus the dark underground; the darkness and light contained in human minds and hearts—all and more are contained in the titular image.

Inspirational nods for the novel go to John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and Elmer Kelton’s The Time It Never Rained, of course. But I also took a surprising cue from Harold Robbins’ The Carpetbaggers! My creation of Andrew Jackson McKintrick, prize fighter, saloon and brothel owner, deputy sheriff, Hollywood film star and producer—and Lulu Tanner’s step-grandfather—owes more than a passing debt to Robbins’ outlaw Max Sand and his reinvention as Hollywood western film star Nevada Smith. As it turns out, many famous and infamous historical figures cut their teeth through exploits on the wild western frontier.

As I developed the characters of Llewelyn Broiles Tanner and her husband Eugene Pomeroy, I took inspiration from the lives of my parents, Max and Florence Reed. Born in 1919 and 1920, respectively, my folks, like the Pomeroys, experienced most of the darknesses and daylights contained in the twentieth century. Their memories were well worth exploring and reproducing fictionally.

Lulu’s story had to be a sprawling, rambunctious tale filled to the brim and over with the joys and sorrows life could bring—so it’s a big book. I hope you love it as much as I did creating it.