Story for a Black Night (ISBN 0618494839) is a 1982 family drama novel by Robert Locke, under the pseudonym Clayton Bess,[1] set in Africa.

[3][4] A 40-year-old man tells a story of his childhood, when he was ten, living with his sister, mother and grandmother.

[5] When strangers left a baby with smallpox at the house, the family is affected by the disease.

After the English version won the Phoenix Honor Award in 2002 for a book that has endured, she decided that she wanted to do a second translation, this time attempting her own French West African dialect.

Also from this main page is a link to the 2014 one-act play "PURE HEART in Black of Night" with the author now using his playwright's name Robert Locke.