High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Through a Glass Darkly is a 1986 historical fiction novel by American author Karleen Koen. A former magazine editor, Koen had never before written a novel and spent four years developing it while living as a housewife with her family. She sold the hardcover rights to Random House for $350,000, which was then a record for a new novelist. The circumstances behind the work`s publication led to Koen becoming the subject of much media attention in the late 1980s.