The Twilight Side of the Hill by Larry Long

About the book

On a spring night in 1958, searchers from the town of Riverview, Iowa find the raped and murdered body of a missing eleven-year-old girl. A young, dark-skinned male, bloody and bruised, naked from the waist up, is lying unconscious a few feet away. He has the murder weapon in his hand.

When Lyle Kincaid arrives home from the University of Iowa for vacation that summer, the stranger's trial is six weeks away. Like the entire community, Lyle is eager for the conviction and execution of the accused boy. Then he is reunited with Nadine Lopez, a mysterious, enchanting Mexican woman from his high school graduating class.

The two immediately plunge into a romantic relationship and Nadine takes Lyle to visit her home amidst the hills. But is is not the farmhouse where everyone believes she and her "Mexican" family dwell. Rather, it is a secret, subterranean village of 500 souls. Lyle is only the second outsider ever to see or know about the place or its people.

The underground world has existed, Lyle's told, for thousands of years. Its inhabitants, abiding by the ways of their Asian ancestors, steadfastly keep their culture hidden from the eyes and influences of the outside world. Lyle also learns that the boy in the county jail could not possibly be guilty -- and that he is Nadine's brother.

Lyle and Nadine struggle throughout the summer to save the boy, first from a biased jury, then from prison. Driven into hiding after breaking him from jail, the two happen upon critical information that leads authorities to the real killer -- a closet pedophile from the very heart of the outraged white community.

The summer ends with justice done, but Lyle and Nadine go their separate ways. As he reflects on their adventure forty-three years after the fact, Lyle muses over what Nadine wrote in one of their annual letters:

... I know the choices I've made in my life have been the right ones, despite the pain. I thank the spirits every day for giving us a love so special that neither could ask the other to change.

Lyle keeps that passage safely tucked away in a favorite book.

About the author

Larry Long holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in speech and dramatic art from the University of Nebraska. He has worked in video and film production as a writer-producer-director for the Nebraska ETV Network, Milwaukee's WMVS/WMVT, Chicago'sWTTW and Wisconsin Public Television. In between stints in public television, he freelanced in advertising production throughout the Midwest and worked in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, writing instructional video scripts for Aramco Oil.

His writing career began when, as a producer/director, he needed scripted material for his productions. First he penned program opens and closes, then intros and extros for on-camera talent; that led to scripting entire segments, then fill-length documentaries and eventually dramas.

Programs Larry scripted have received over one hundred national and regional awards, including two Midwest (Chicago) Emmys and three Corporation for Public Broadcasting citations.

Several documentaries he produced in recent years dealt with immigration, particularly Asian and Hispanic populations. Material gathered for New Faces on Main Street and Hmong Means Free inspired his first novel, The Twilight Side Of The Hill.

He has since authored two more novels, Escape to Blue River and A Safe Place in Kansas, and is hard at work on a fourth, The Curse on Coulter County.

Larry's hobbies include reading, landscaping, college sports and jigsaw puzzles. He and his wife, Nancy, and their pet Shih Tzus, live in Green Bay, Wisconsin and Tucson, Arizona.