An Echo in the Darkness

An Echo in the Darkness is a historical novel by the American writer Francine Rivers, published in 1994 by Tyndale House and the second book of the Mark of the Lion series. It won a RITA award for inspirational romance in 1995.

The series is set in the Roman Empire in the first century. Hadassah, a young Jewish Christian taken to Rome as a slave, was condemned to the arena at the end of the first book because her owner was jealous of her. This one opens with the physician Alexander choosing her body out of the dead to examine and finding that the lion missed her vital organs. She is nursed back to health and kept hidden, while Marcus, the son of the household she served, is drawn back towards the belief she never renounced. Rome is shown through that household, through its trading business and through the small Christian community that shelters her.

Rivers wrote the series for a Christian readership, and the three novels take the shape of a family chronicle rather than a romance about one couple. The final book is As Sure as the Dawn.