Freedom's Child

Freedom's Child by Jax Miller

Raw.  Unapologetic. Powerful.  These are some of the review words from others about Freedom’s Child. It’s definitely all of those and more.   

       Freedom Oliver  isn’t what she seems.  She is rough, brash, gets arrested for drunkenness almost nightly, works in a biker bar, her best friends are prostitutes and  is absolutely fearless.  Everyone’s best friend, right?  But what her friends don’t know is that Freedom isn’t her real name, she’s a part of the Witness Protection program and is a mother devoted to the children she had to leave behind.  Oh, and she was arrested for killing her husband. 

       When Freedom discovers her daughter might have been kidnapped she switches into mother mode and travels cross country in an attempt to find out what happened to her and hopefully find her safe.  Along the way she is reunited with her son,  tries to outsmart the sadistic brothers of her dead husband who are out to kill her after they’ve taught her a lesson, and  infiltrates a religious cult.

       I have to say, this one had me going from the beginning.   The action never stopped, Freedom never gave up and the story evolved seamlessly.  It’s not for the faint of heart but it’s worth every minute.

Finally winter

 Tuesday.  Sickness.  Adelaide.  Whatever is going around it's cutting a wide swath through the school and it caught Adelaide on Monday night.  Grandma to the rescue.  Wednesday it caught up with Elizabeth, too, so we all had a couple of couch days.

Finally, at the very end of the month we got the snow we should have been getting the whole month.  I'm so glad we didn't have a normal winter, considering our mountain of a driveway. I took this picture last night during the storm with just the porch light on. You could still see the plants on the ground.  But not today.  We got about 11 inches overnight. When you wake up to this much snow it's so quiet everywhere.  No traffic, no sound at all.

 We won't be out of here till who knows when...the driveway plow came last night at 9:15, just about half way through the storm, but this driveway (our house is somewhere up there) needs to be clean to drive.  So I decided to take a walk into town, and when I got to the bottom of the driveway hill I saw the streets are plowed and just wet.  People in the neighborhood are all out with their snowblowers and shovels. I love this house but not till we actually get into it.  Getting into it is a challenge.

 The showboat looks like a wedding cake.  Notice how strong the wind is blowing the flag.

These guys are cheered when they come by.  Unless you just finished your driveway and you now have to go back out and shovel the chunks he pushed back in.

 You can see Adelaide is back to herself.  As I walked home I heard, "Grandma!  Grandma!" from across the street.  (Notice how clean their sidewalk is and the street is cleared?)  Not us.  Sigh.

 My hexie basket is filling up.

Now, you would think that because we are captive and can't drive out anywhere that I'd go into the bedroom and start working on more quilty things.  Put a DVD in and watch an old movie. Quilter's paradise, right?  Probably I will finish the book I'm close to finishing and take a nap.  Probably.  And this is why I don't get as much quilting done as all of you...

 The sun is coming out!

True Stories at the Smoky View

True Stories at the Smoky View by Jill McCroskey Coupe

       Vraiment  Lynde (Vrai for short) travels to Knoxville, Tennessee to attend the funeral of her friend Skip.  She kind of has to be there.  She has his ashes among his other possessions, including his dog.  She hoped the trip would be short.  She would attend the funeral, deliver his ashes, belongings and dog to his mother and then leave for home.   

      What she wasn’t expecting was finding a shoeless ten year old boy abandoned in the funeral home parking lot.  Jonathan is the son of her childhood best friend and she can’t just leave him there.  Even if he wasn’t the son of her best friend she couldn’t just leave him there!  She decides, along with Jonathan, that he will come with her.  His parents had been murdered and he was now living with his uncle and not so cuddly aunt.

        The other thing she wasn’t expecting was a snowstorm that cripples the East.  While she and Jonathan hole up in a roadside motel, The Smoky View, they begin to read some of Skip’s stories from his computer.  Jonathan is convinced that Skip and a co-worker’s deaths were not accidental.  As they start to make sense of Skip’s stories and make connections they become close, bonding in ways that can only mean a future for them both.

       What I liked about this story was the findings in what seemed like nothings.  Vrai and Jonathan put together Skip’s story from what looked like impossible to find nothings.  Good job!

The author worked on this story for 20 years and she deserves to have her story read.