This book is the first part of Disguised as a Man: Malachi Martin & Me, originally published as one long book under the pseudonym, Sally Hawthorne. The longer book broke down naturally to a trilogy, so each more readable section is available now as Part I: The Encounter, Part II: Hostage to the Devil and Part III: Windswept House. The true story recounts the long love affair between the late Father Malachi Martin, a man whose reputation is, even now, notorious and enigmatic, and the author, a young woman thirty-seven years younger.
All attempts at writing a genuine biography of Martin proved futile, for Malachi Martin was a master of confabulation. Instead, it became a memoir of infatuation, seduction, faith and its erosion, and what it means to tell the truth and to recover autonomy and integrity after living in fantasy world that Malachi fostered in the mind of the author. Martin's brilliance is apparent on almost every page, but the books raise more questions than they answer. Exorcism, extraterrestrials, politics and, of course, religion, are among the major themes of Martin's stories, tales that strain the credulity of even his most ardent lover and fan.
In Part II, Hostage to the Devil, a number of ghastly events unfold and the author begins to realize that Martin is not only unreliable but dangerous and perhaps even insane.