A Knowledge of Darkness by Ann RinaldiAnn Rinaldi has written many books for young adolescents. She is an award-winning author who writes stories about American history and makes them real for readers. . She has written many other books such as… A Break with Charity, A Ride into Morning and Cast two Shadows, etc. She was born in New York on August 27, 1934. In 1979, at the age of 45, she completed her first book. An Acquaintance with Darkness by Ann Rinaldi is about Emily Bransby, a 14-year-old girl living in Washington DC at the time President Lincoln was assassinated, when we slaves were being freed and people were going crazy everywhere. new changes underway. Her mother has just died and her best friend's mother is imprisoned for participating in Lincoln's murder. Because her father is also dead, Emily is forced to live with her mother's hated brother, Uncle Valentine, who is a doctor who is hiding a secret. Emily must decide how much she is willing to risk for her uncle. A Knowledge of Darkness was a good (but sometimes boring) book, well written with a good twist at the end. Emily was lying in bed when suddenly she heard a loud knock on her door in the middle of the night. She went to see who it was and luckily it was her good old friend Johnny Surrat who she hadn't seen in a long time, Johnny had said he was on a business trip, well he came in and he spoke to her and asked how she and her mother were surviving since their slave had been freed before President Lincoln's death. He gave him twenty gold coins and told him that he was on an important mission and did not know when he would return. Emily lived with her mother who was dying. And she took care of her mother until the day she died. When her mother died at first, she was quite relieved that it was all over...yet she really missed her mother. Before her mother died, her mother told her not to go live with her uncle, but he somehow gained legal custody of her. And she was sent to live with him. Her uncle said he was a doctor and he had a lot of patients… who came to his house and he helped a lot of people and she always wondered why her mother hated him so much, he seemed like a good man..