Walking through a used bookstore in Morro Bay, I came upon Frank Peretti’s 1986 hit, This Present Darkness, sitting between some Ted Dekker and Tim LaHaye novels. While at first I didn’t give the volume much thought, after the first few chapters I was completely and irreversibly hooked, fixed to an ingenious novel about spiritual warfare and the role it plays in people’s lives.
This Present Darkness centers around the close-knit community of Ashton, a small, middle-American town where everyone’s biggest concern is how much money is made at the local bake-sale. Everything about Ashton seems normal at first, but after local reporter Bernice Kreuger is arrested and detained on false charges, Marshall Hogan, owner of The Clarion — Ashton’s small but successful paper — begins to suspect that abnormal happenings are underfoot.
Hogan decides to visit Alf Brummel, the police chief, in order to learn the real reason his reporter was arrested. Brummel waves him off, insisting that the police did nothing wrong, and advises Hogan to drop the concern entirely. However, Hogan persists, spending many late nights snooping around the town trying to discover what exactly is going on.
Likewise, local pastor Hank Busche is encountering resistance within the community. While other churches in town are more lenient and New Age, Busche runs his church on conservative values, and, after kicking an adulterous board member out of his congregation, has become unpopular among many individuals.
Unfortunately for the two protagonists, the source of their main problems is not the people around them; rather, it is what is left unnoticed by the seeing eye: demons. These demons aren’t hanging around the town for no apparent reason, for they have been sent there by the Strongman, one of the most powerful demons in existence, and are led in part by Juleen Langstrat, a professor of philosophy at Ashton’s community college.
The Strongman is looking to create a new world order, and Ashton is just one of the first pieces in the puzzle for this insidious plot.
As the demons’ grip on Ashton tightens, both Busche and Hogan encounter some form of opposition — Busche is threatened by both townspeople and demons, while Hogan is shadowed by a demon named Complacency who attempts to slow him down in his quest for the truth.
All hope is not lost, however, as angels have been sent from heaven to combat the demon forces. A small group is led by Tal, and as the book progresses, the party grows larger and larger.
The novel goes on to cover the battle between the angels and the demons, between the New Age and conservative townspeople, and describes the conflicts centered on everyone pulling the strings behind the curtain.
This Present Darkness was a compelling read for many reasons, but my favorite would have to be how intriguing the book is. Even though the piece is extremely long — my version being a stout 508 pages — each chapter left me with an unquenchable thirst for more, something I don’t normally see in most books.
I think the main reason for this volume’s appeal is the interesting concepts Peretti employs. For example, both the angels and demons have a unique role in the plot, in that they help turn events without the humans realizing their involvement. Demons are seen attacking people to give them strokes, meddling with cars or doing other nasty things that most people would just associate with bad luck. I found everything Peretti threw out in the novel thought-provoking and imaginative.
Now, of course, a lot of these things are not to be taken literally. This book is a work of fiction, and should be treated as such. Spiritual warfare is not something brought up in every piece of literature, and had it not been for Peretti’s genius mind, this book would certainly have been a failure.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed This Present Darkness, there was one thing that really bugged me about the printing of the book. I do not know if it was my edition or simply an error of the publisher, but there were many spots I found while I was reading where words were misspelled, run-on-sentences ran rampant and other English rules were completely broken.
These errors, to me, seemed like a completely unprofessional way to present a book that has sold over a million copies over the years, and if I were the publisher, I would make permanent changes to the book the first time to avoid embarrassment.
Despite this minor flaw, I think that This Present Darkness will remain a classic for years to come and will fascinate anyone who has the time to read it, just as it has fascinated me.
This Present Darkness is available at Amazon.com and at most local bookstores for about $10 paperback or $15 hardcover.
For more book reviews, read the Feb. 15 article, ‘Water for Elephants’ tells ‘engaging story.’
