Ten years ago I wrote Devil’s Dance, the story of two brothers at risk for Huntington’s Disease.  Though I have written seven novels since Devil’s Dance was published, I have never been able to get rid of the characters and the conflicts presented under the shadow of HD that drove me to write the book in the first place.  Hence Devil’s Dance Redux, the sequel in which I propelled the characters of the original book twenty years ahead and found out for myself what had happened to them. 

Devil’s Dance was in certain respects an almost historical novel since the action takes place before the gene that causes HD had been discovered.  It was in 1993 when the HD gene was first documented and a reliable blood test developed that could with almost 100% accuracy determine whether one at risk would or would not one day come down with this most pernicious of diseases.  Whether to take the test or not becomes a central conflict in Redux. At the same time I have chosen to explore another theme that I have long wished to deal with: the racism inherent within our society.  These two themes, though on the surface may appear incongruous, interact with each other and become the substance of Devil’s Dance Redux.  When questions as complex as the ones that are asked in this novel arise, a writer can only poke here and there and hope he sheds a little light for the reader as he attempts to answer them. 

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