Product Description This unforgettable story of undying love combines mysticism, suspense, mystery, and romance into a web of good and evil that stretches from 16th-century England to the present day. Richard Marsdon marries a young American woman named Celia, brings her to live at his English estate, and all seems to be going well. But now Richard has become withdrawn, and Celia is constantly haunted by a vague dread. When she suffers a breakdown and wavers between life and death, a wise doctor realizes that only by forcing Celia to relive her past can he enable her to escape her illness. Celia travels back 400 years in time to her past life as a beautiful but doomed servant. Through her eyes, we see the England of the Tudors, torn by religious strife, and experience all the pageantry, lustiness, and cruelty of the age. As in other historical romance titles by this author, the past comes alive in this flamboyant classic novel. Review "Seton's use of language, the crisp descriptions, the depth of emotions shown subtly growing to an almost unbearable pinnacle." —Barbara Samuel, a.k.a. Ruth Wind"Anya Seton has a knack of vividly painting the glory, cruelty, passion, and prejudice of long-ago days." —Hartford Courant"A 16th-century English love story entrenched in mysticism, enchantment, and suspense." —True Romance From the Back Cover The theme of this book is reincarnation, an attempt to show the interplay the law of cause and effect, good and evil, among certain individual souls in two periods of English history. Green Darkness is the story of a great love, a love in which mysticism, suspense, and mystery form a web of good and evil forces that stretches from Tudor England to the England of the twentieth century. The marriage of the Englishman Richard Marsdon and his young American wife, Celia, slowly turns tragic as Richard withdraws into himself and Celia suffers a debilitating emotional breakdown. A wise mystic realizes that Celia can escape her past only by reliving it. She journeys back four hundred years to her former life as the servant girl Celia de Bohun during the reign of Edward VI and to her doomed love affair with the chaplain Stephen Marsdon. Although Celia and Stephen can t escape the horrifying consequences of their love, fate (and time) offer them another chance for redemption. Anya Seton (1904 1990) was the author of many best-selling historical novels, including Katherine, The Winthrop Woman, Avalon, Dragonwyck, Devil Water, and Foxfire. She lived in Greenwich, Connecticut. " About the Author ANYA SETON (1904 1990) was the author of many best-selling historical novels, including Katherine, Avalon, Dragonwyck, Devil Water, and Foxfire. She lived in Greenwich, Connecticut. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Chapter OneCelia Marsdon, young, rich and unhappy, sat huddled in a lounge chair at the far end of the new swimming pool vaguely listening to the chatter of their weekend guests.   Across the pool, above the privet hedge and the rose-laden pergola, sprawled the cluttered roof line of the Sussex manor house, Medfield Place. Richard’s home. Her home, now. “Lady of the manor,” a manor which had seen centuries of these ladies.   In the 1200’s some Marsdon—Ralph, was it?—had built himself a small stone keep close by the River Cuckmere. The stones he used were still incorporated in the walls of what looked to be a Tudor mansion of gables, twisted chimney pots, blackened oak half-timbering amongst peach-toned bricks. But there were later touches, too, a Georgian bay window added to the dining room, improbable fanlights cut over doorways, and—most shocking of all to the humorless young architect who had come down from London to supervise repairs—two crassly Victorian additions. Sir Thomas, the only Marsdon baronet who could be called wealthy, had prospered during Queen Victoria’s reign owing to his wi