On meeting Fleda Brown Jackson, UD professor of English, one would never imagine the soft-spoken poet could produce the book, The Devil's Child, which details almost unspeakable evil. Whereas her early volumes relate "gentle, rational family experiences," The Devil's Child is, she concedes, "a book full of horror."

"Readers who know Fleda Brown Jackson's earlier books-Fishing with Blood and Do Not Peel the Birches-may well wonder who wrote this one," W.D. Snodgrass, UD Distinguished Professor Emeritus, writes in the foreword.

Based on a true story, The Devil's Child, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press, centers on Barbara, a woman who was raised in a satanic cult-family and developed multiple personalities to cope with her violent life.

Originally, Barbara's voice was the only one heard in the book, but friends and other poets advised Jackson to add other characters to keep readers from being overwhelmed by the evils Barbara recounts.

Jackson agreed. "My biggest fear was that all that horror would get in the way of the poems," she says. "People told me it was just too painful for all the Barbara poems to be alone. The book did need other voices-people on the outside who could help the readers step away from Barbara and find a broader perspective."

The result is Jackson's first attempt at a book-length, unified narrative sequence and the first time she has written in multiple voices. It was a huge challenge, she says, and a project that took more than 10 years to complete. Along the way, she carefully researched multiple-personality disorders and the process of integrating personalities so that her narrative is psychologically accurate.

The finished product has Barbara, snowbound in a church basement after a meeting, telling the appalling saga of her life to a priest, Father Andrew, and a writer, Suzanna, who attends the church.

"Even as she describes this ferocious (birth) family, a related but benign family is forming around her, with Suzanna and the priest...as surrogate parents. And, Barbara has at least as much effect on them as they on her," Snodgrass writes.

The priest, Jackson says, is a sort of safety valve that helps balance the topic of satanic ritual with church ritual and provides a sort of community perspective. His character is the compilation of several ministers and priests, the poet says, and he also was developed with advice from colleague Anne Colwell, associate professor of English in UD's Parallel Program, who provided anecdotes about growing up in the Catholic Church.

The priest also is an interesting contrast to Barbara, Snodgrass says. Just as she has divided her personality to become smaller and less visible, Father Andrew, a compulsive eater, has grown larger and larger under his weighty role as priest.

Suzanna, the writer, who started out to be a lot like Jackson herself, "eventually grew into another person-an intellectual who is always trying to solve problems with reason alone," Jackson says. Barbara's horrific tales break through something in Suzanna and cause her to examine her own feelings.

Suzanna also has the ability, as Jackson does in real life, to move the abused woman's words to a safe place.

"I keep moving [Barbara's] words to safety...I have not believed in evil," Suzanna says in one poem.

"It's an interesting thing about art-language can be a protector, a container for all of the misery flying around, a container that keeps it safe for you," Jackson explains.

But, just because she felt compelled to contain this story in words, doesn't mean it was easy.

"It caused me a great deal of pain to write these poems," Jackson says. "Sometimes, I'd have to stop and call a friend just to talk about ordinary things. I wrote the Barbara poems so quickly. There was a time I was writing one a day. Think of the pressure of that! I just had to get it down."

"In writing the book," Jackson says, "I found myself cornered with the issue of 'what is evil?' I don't really like questions like that. They are too impossible. But, there it was. None of the characters in the book is able to come up with an answer, exactly, but it becomes the central issue. Is evil a psychological problem? For example, are people evil because they've had bad childhoods? Or, is evil some sort of spiritual entity on its own that has been personified into a devil? The one thing the book does resolve is that you have to see evil. You have to know it's there. Otherwise, it'll get you when you aren't looking."

Still, there is hope in this story, Jackson insists, and it is a story with "much life in it."

"When people are in agony, we know what they are saying is true. It is at times of great pain that people are at their truest. People are so much themselves then that it's especially touching. The real Barbara's courage and her willingness to face all this was very moving for me," she explains.

"Barbara's life does get better in the end. Although it was difficult, I tried to create situations that would show her thinking more optimistically and moving toward health and an integration of the personalities. There is a section when she marvels at her grandson, Jason, and his ability to stay alive. Although she is not able to go upstairs to participate in church service yet, she is able to work in the nursery in the basement of the church. She is right on the edge."

"To take a character most would think either deranged or so deeply damaged as to be irreparable-in any case, so extreme as to deserve only the sensationalistic attention found in TV 'magazines'-and instead see her involvement with the broader rage of humanity seems to me a splendid achievement," Snodgrass concludes.

Copies of The Devil's Child are available from the University Bookstore.

-Beth Thomas