Excerpt: 'In His Sights'

Aug. 7, 2008 — -- Author Kate Brennan's new memoir, "In His Sights: A True Story of Love and Obsession," explores her relationship with a man she thought was Mr. Right. After the couple moved in together, Kate learns of Paul's unbalanced nature and multiple infidelities. The memoir follows Kate through her breakup with Paul, and the terrifying changes he brings to her life as he stalks and harasses her for more than a decade.

Read an excerpt from the book below or click here to learn more.

Chapter One

It's my last full day in Haworth. I get up early and rush through breakfast at the B and B, passing on a cooked meal, settling for coffee and toast with homemade marmalade. I want to be at the library as soon as the staff opens the doors. Running through the mental list of manuscripts I want to review this morning, I lean against the stone wall on the edge of the parking lot. Just beyond the Georgian parsonage, white cumulus clouds roll over the moors, casting shadows across the grass and heather. Before this trip I didn't know that heather was an evergreen, its whorled leaves and waving petals so different from the spruce and pine and fir at home. From a distance the moors are a soft world of purples and browns and greens, but up close they reveal rough terrain and reservoirs full of water so cold it can kill.

"You're here early," says the head librarian as we pass through the shop on the way to the library. She looks the part. Somber dark suit. Serious glasses. Even her long mahogany hair is wrapped tight in a bun. But over the past two weeks, I've had a window into her evenings and weekends. Not so serious then. I like that— second impressions that pleasantly surprise.

It's already hot and windy outside, but inside the library it's dry and still and cool, to accommodate the manuscripts. Here dead people count more than the living. So each day I throw a sweater and pair of socks in my backpack on top of the notebooks and pencils. No pens allowed. I put on the cotton sweater now and reach for the white gloves I'd left on the long wooden table yesterday afternoon. The library, available to scholars by application, is housed in the part of the Brontë Parsonage that was once the kitchen where Emily reigned—when she wasn't haunting the moors, probably trying to escape Charlotte's hovering.