In Annihilator of Innocence, we are introduced to District Attorney J. Tom Morgan, who represents and defends abused children in DeKalb County, Georgia. He’s never seen a case like this. “Barbara Clark, you’re in Grady,” the nurse says. The patient hears but cannot respond. From the darkest depths she struggles to speak, desperate to be heard. A little light appears to be at the end of a long tunnel. In unspoken words – which sound unfamiliar even in her mind – she wonders: Who is Barbara Clark, and what is the place called Grady?
This is how Barbara Clark’s courageous and agonizing journey of remembering – and healing – began.
She was admitted to Grady Memorial Hospital under mysterious circumstances, an apparent suicide attempt. Her daughter Tisha, frightened and bewildered, was brought in to confirm her mother’s identity. “That’s the lady,” said the girl. Down the corridor Tisha could see him, the man all three – mother, daughter and son – called the Old Man.
But who was this man, and what dark, uncanny power enabled him to invade a family’s life and hold them hostage in urban Atlanta for two years, in plain sight?
In gripping and blunt detail, and at times in rapid-fire fashion, Barbara Clark tells her story, recovering jagged pieces of life and assembling them into a mosaic of love, renewal, freedom and hope.
J. Tom Morgan is put to the test of his life as he tries to protect this family from the torments of a strangely charismatic – but deadly dangerous – old man. Barbara Clark is set on a path that requires divine strength and armor not of this world.
It has been said that hell is the absence of light. Annihilator of Innocence is about moving from darkness into the light.
Altadena Valley Country Club is located off of Acton Road in Birmingham, Alabama.
