The Between [Paperback]

Tananarive Due (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 27, 1996

When Hilton was just a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake.

When Hilton's wife, the only elected African-American judge in Dade County, FL, begins to receive racist hate mail, he becomes obsessed with protecting his family. Soon, however, he begins to have horrible nightmares, more intense and disturbing than any he has ever experienced. Are the strange dreams trying to tell him something? His sense of reality begins to slip away as he battles both the psychotic threatening to destroy his family and the even more terrifying enemy stalking his sleep. Chilling and utterly convincing, The Between follows the struggles of a man desperately trying to hold on to the people and life he loves, but may have already lost. The compelling plot holds readers in suspense until the final, profound moment of resolution.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Multiple time-lines and alternate branching destinies are more often associated with science fiction than horror, but in this first novel by an African-American woman, a man who has cheated death finds that his ability to walk through doorways in time brings dark forces into his life. Due employs a lucid, almost stately, prose style to evoke an escalating sense of menace toward a middle-class American family with connections to Ghana. Dreams? Madness? Ghosts? A racist killer? What is happening to these people?

From Publishers Weekly

Although set largely in the black and Hispanic communities of Florida's Dade County, Due's first novel, a skillful blend of horror and the supernatural, poses questions about life and identity that transcend racial boundaries. Thirty years after he was saved from drowning by the beloved grandmother who died in his place, Hilton James has built a secure middle-class life for his African American family and saved a few lives himself through his social work in Miami's inner city. His comfortable existence is shattered when his wife, a judge, begins receiving racist death threats and he starts having nightmares of alternate life experiences so authentic that they begin to loosen his grip on reality. Is Hilton a latent schizophrenic, as his therapist thinks? Or are the dreams and death threats both signs of a cosmic scheme in which Hilton is meant to accept the death that he eluded before? The mystical explanation Due posits for Hilton's predicament, involving "travelers," or persons who unconsciously use dreams as "doorways" to elude fate and live in "the between" world, is not nearly as disturbing as her depiction of Hilton's gradual decline from caring husband and father to a man who lashes out in frustration against those he loves. Her sympathetic and credible portrait of Hilton as a man discomposed by his encounter with the unknown compensates for the novel's underdeveloped supporting cast. Due also subtly suggests the horrifying thought that pervades the story but is left tactfully unspoken: if each of us creates our own reality, then ultimately we are all alone in the world. $25,000 ad/ promo; author tour. U.K. and translation rights, HarperCollins; other rights, Marie Brown Associates.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (March 27, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060927267
• ISBN-13: 978-0060927264
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #834,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What's real?, June 15, 2002

By 

The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers (RAWSISTAZ.com and BlackBookReviews.net) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Between (Paperback)

How many chances do we get at life? What happens when we are meant to die and, yet we live? In Tananarive Due's novel The Between, the answer may not be what you think.

Hilton battled nightmares of his grandmother's death for years. After therapy, he was able to rest without the haunting images invading his slumber. Now, five years after he had his last night horror, the images return when his family is threatened by a racist who has set out to destroy them. Hilton's reality becomes a jumbled mess each time he wakes up. He finds he has done things he doesn't remember doing and has not done things he recalls. This thwart of his reality threatens to send him over the edge.

I have heard so many things about Tananarive Due's novels, though I had only read her book The Black Rose. I had no idea how enthralling her fiction could be. The writing is that of the most divine quality. The story makes you look over your shoulder. The idea makes you stay up late trying to surmise the existence of Hilton. The characters jump off the page and haunt your dreams. I found myself, long after the last page had been turned, wondering what it was like to live in the Between.

Reviewed by Candace K

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic, June 14, 2000

By 

S. Bishop "bookworm" (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Between (Paperback)

It is usually pretty easy to differentiate an author's first work from their subsequent works. I read Tananarive Due's My Soul To Keep first and finished The Between months later ... They were equally superb.

The Between is a suspenseful first novel which chronicles the confusing life (death?) of Hilton, a man who, at age 8, nearly drowned but was saved by his grandmother. As an adult he suffers from horrendous nightmares and soon becomes unable to distinguish them from his waking hours. Coupled with having to protect his family from a psychotic, racist, ex-convict who is after his prosecutor wife, Hilton and the reader are tossed into a world of dreams/reality, life/death, sanity/insanity ... death/life.

This was a chilling and thrilling tale. I am usually not one who automatically sees movie potential in a book but I think this one would be a tortuous theme for the silver screen.

I anxiously (and nervously) await another novel by Tananarive Due !

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars True to life eerie tale, December 8, 1997

By 

Susan Bishop - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Between (Paperback)

It is usually pretty easy to differentiate an author's first work from their subsequent works. I read Tananarive Due's My Soul To Keep first and finished The Between months later ... They were equally superb.

The Between is a suspenseful first novel which chronicles the confusing life (death?) of Hilton, a man who, at age 8, nearly drowned but was saved by his grandmother. As an adult he suffers from horrendous nightmares and soon becomes unable to distinguish them from his waking hours. Coupled with having to protect his family from a psychotic, racist, ex-convict who is after his prosecutor wife, Hilton and the reader are tossed into a world of dreams/reality, life/death, sanity/insanity ... death/life.

This was a chilling and thrilling tale. I am usually not one who automatically sees movie potential in a book but I think this one would be a tortuous theme for the silver screen.

I anxiously (and nervously) await another novel by Tananarive Due !!