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I love campfire songs. Of course, when I joined the youth choir, they teased me no end. I remember Jo Beth saying, “Watch out, Britney. Here comes our little pop star.” That type of thing.
Really liking this show...
I really thought I'd seen all styles of books...but there's always another writer who presents a story that is so compelling that you keep on reading, no matter what the pages look like... Let me explain... Or better, show you... Starting with the Playlist... And I have to admit upfront, LOL, that every time I read Per Say rather than Per Se, I cringed... literally...
I keep my radio tuned to the station that rotates between country and oldies. It felt like a good sign when the Grateful Dead came on mid-chorus. Sugar Magnolia. Bobby set to drumming his knees.
“Mason was a good ’un. The kind that die young.” I give Bobby a sharp look, but he has dropped his head, playing with a grass blade, and I think he’s being serious. Not smart-alecky.
Of course, he wouldn’t notice the likes of me. For one, he was two years ahead of me. Not to mention he’s from a rich family, the kind of boy that’s going to college. We were not in that class. But in spite of everything, the two of us did come together. We never dated, per say. He never took me to a dance or movie or nothing. We didn’t have friends in common that we might of run with as a group. After all, I was not the outgoing kind and had never really dated at the middle school. But against the odds, we crossed paths that fall of my sophomore year. It started at a sock hop after a football game the week after my fifteenth birthday. The dance was winding down. I was hanging around till the group of girls I palled with decided we were ready to split. Kids in couples, or the ones who had hopes of getting next to someone, were waiting for the last romantic slow song. It started at last—“Baby Hold On” by the Dixie Chicks, one of my favorites back then. Bernard happened to be standing with his friends in my field of vision, and when I heard that song, nothing could of been more natural than to raise my eyes on him—the angel-haired boy I’d dreamed about since last spring. That’s when a miracle happened because, somehow-some-way, Bernard glanced at me, right in the same moment. Our eyes hooked, and he didn’t hesitate more than a second—he walked right over to me. The gap between us was, maybe, twelve feet, but it felt like he was flying across the whole Ohio River to a separate world where I was living my little-small life. He put out a hand. His face had a sweet, kind of lopsided, grin. His voice said, “Shall we dance?” I had never heard anybody, let alone a kid around my age, say a thing like “Shall we dance?” Now, I know—and more or less knew at the time—he might of been looking to make some other girl jealous. I saw one or two of them, back where he’d been standing, drop their jaws when he put the move on li’l LaDene Howell. But why would I care? It did not cross my mind that this was anything less that a gift from God. When I took his hand, I stepped into my Cinderella story. His touch shot a bolt through me that felt stronger than the hardest drink I’ve had in my life—if he hadn’t taken me into his arms, I doubt I could’ve kept upright. My knees were that weak. But he kept the hand I put in his, pulled it to his heart, so my breasts fit on either side of our wrists. My temple came to rest on the front of his shoulder. His other hand and all his fingers traced the bones across my back and settled on my shoulder blade. I thought I might grow wings and really be like him. I know he must of felt me tingling all over. His slightest touch had done that to me. When the song stopped, at first I couldn’t raise my eyes. After a moment, I followed his hand lifting mine to his face, and he planted a kiss between the knuckles of my first two fingers. He said, “Aren’t you from Devola? One of the Howell girls?” In that euphoric state, it didn’t cross my mind that Effie and Jo Beth’s reputations might of preceded me. I nodded, or maybe I said yes, although it felt like I couldn’t possibly use my voice right then. He kept holding my hand and kept talking. “You like to hang out at Devola Lock and Dam? Me and my friends go there a lot. Come out this Sunday, if you can.” He gave my hand a final squeeze, turned away, headed back to his friends. The world could of ended right then and left me happy. But he glanced over his shoulder and said out loud, “Thanks for the dance!” To me he looked like the happiest, most carefree boy that had ever lived. I wanted to eat that like a last meal. It took a little while for us to wind up together. That first Sunday I rode my bike to the park to meet him, it was like he said—a bunch of kids hanging out in a group. Boys from the various sports teams that were known as arrogant jerks. A couple of girls on the benches—the fashion-plate type that belong to clubs, daughters of lawyers and judges. Some brandished cigarettes and blew puffs in a showy manner. I stopped while there were still shrubs along the roadside to hide me, listened to the boys’ loud laughs, the girls giggles, and didn’t go up to them at all. I turned right-round and rode home. But all that week, I reviewed how Bernard had looked at the park in khaki shorts, his powerful legs in sockless boat shoes, wide forearms emerging from an oversize blue T-shirt. So clean, so relaxed—shooting the breeze with wide shrugs and grins. Not smoking. Clearly a nicer boy than the company he kept. So the next Sunday, back I went, down the narrow asphalt road. River water pouring over the dam filled my ears. Sitting on top and around the lone picnic table, it was more or less the same group from the week before. It was a gorgeous day of early fall, no longer hot but still sunny, still warm, trees barely touched with yellow and rust. I told myself I had as much right to hang out at the lock as anybody. Sure, I did. My family used to stroll over here, evenings. My dad took his boat out on the river all the time. My sister Effie claims he took us fishing almost every weekend when she was little. Too bad none of that made it into my memories. But while I hung back debating myself, Bernard caught sight of me from where he was standing by the picnic table. I still remember how his arm shot up above his head, and he waved real wide like he was signaling somebody off in West Virginia. And he called to me. He had found out my first name. He called me by my name: “Hey, LaDene Howell—!” And he smiled real big. I was pretty near a total fool at that point, but it made a nice impression that he wasn’t ashamed for his friends to meet me and see that he had some kind of fondness for me. I knew it meant he was a nice person deep down. Honest to God, I still think so, no matter all the shit that was soon to meet the fan. It turned out, the boys in Bernard’s crew were actually quite interested to hear about my family. The notorious Twist-line men, that is. Everyone has heard tales about some of my relatives: Jake Blaine Howell who used to pimp out his own wife and sisters, back in the day. Old Eustis Howell who did a murder for hire in 1987. It never occurred to me that those connections could spark people’s interest in my own self. I was happy to confirm that, yes—my uncle was Big Bobby Howell who’d come home from Belmont just a couple years prior. And, of course, renowned bar-fighter Bobby Frank was my cousin. I omitted the fact that my own family had cut ties with most of them years ago. It only struck me as a little scandalous that those boys on the picnic table were swigging from cans of beer. Bernard soon pulled a bottle of pink wine out of a backpack. He twisted the cap off and handed the bottle to a girl sitting across from him. There were no glasses, so she drank from the neck and passed the bottle to her friend. That one drank and passed to me. I tasted it—my first alcohol. A couple of turns had me knocked pretty near on my ass. Everything about hanging with this group was so new to me, I really didn’t notice right off when the party starting breaking up. Or rather, it started breaking down into couples who scattered here and there, down to the cove to make out under the willows and on the little sand beach by the river. The odd boys out shuffled off to a black and chrome Silverado pickup parked on the asphalt. The driver revved his engine and drove away down the road. That’s when my wish came true—Bernard was alone at the table with me. We talked a little more, I’ve no idea what about. In years to come, I would review every touch and sensation at least ten-thousand times, but I can’t recall a single specific word we exchanged. I just knew that he was being sweet, not mocking me, or treating me like a lowlife hick, regardless who my family was. I talked a lot more country than him and his friends, but he showed no sign of caring a snap about such things as pronunciation or community standing. Of course, sex was not a secret to me. Momma had explained many times which body parts were involved and that it was the number-one thing girls must deny boys as a sacred duty. Jo Beth and Effie teased me in the privacy of our bedroom, telling all the details of their exploits. One time, I remember Effie asking me, “How many times you been fingered, LD?” The answer was zero, but I was so horrified she might think it had happened even once, I pressed a pillow over my head. Naturally, she only said it for the fun of freaking me out. So I had learned a lot of racy things, but the upshot was I viewed sex as something dire and disgusting. When I fell in love with Bernard, it truly didn’t cross my mind that what I was craving with him was sex. I utterly believed this was something higher, some fine and beautiful destiny. I could no more have turned him down than I could of stopped the sun in the sky. All told, I went out to meet him by the river six weeks in a row. I looked back later and counted up every meeting on the calendar. He took time to kiss me and hold me. He pressed me up against the wall of the pump station, and he brought along a soft plaid blanket for me to lie on. I thought I had discovered a lovely new world that held a special place for me where I would live in grace from then on, lonely no more. Indeed, a new life did open for me. Just not the one I imagined in those mad romantic days.
~~~~
Now I'm a country girl, so I began to recognize many of the words that were used... And we soon realize that a young girl is being interviewed by an officer who starts out asking questions... Then she took over saying that if they wanted to hear the whole story, she'd be happy to start... And she did...
The entire book proceeds from page 1 through to the final page with no stops, other than a short breath (and a bold phrase) to indicate a different scene. I was fascinated by the ease by which I was reading--without the distraction of chapter heading, pagination, etc., that readers (actually publishers) have become accustomed to--indeed, actually demand for the most part...
Then I was thinking about what law officer would actually have the patience to allow such a takeover of the questioning activity. My mind turned to Sheriff Country, and the one woman who just might have the patience as long as she knew the story would continue. Which it did for 207 pages with No White Space to be seen! LOL... Just the facts Ma'am--Just the facts... Well, not exactly, I learned today!
Now the thing is that she and a cousin was brought in for something that actually takes place almost at the end of the book... Yep, but this young lady, felt it was necessary to establish the background which had led to the situation where she was holding a knife and cutting a few places on his body... No, this is not satire, a comedy, or any other genre you might think of... It is a crime drama that happens to start many, many years ago...
I, LaDene Faye Howell, will recount the events of August 12, 2019, including all relevant background leading up to the encounter that I understand you are investigating. I will tell all in full truth and will hold nothing back to protect myself from the eyes of the law. Other persons involved do not know the full history of how and why things took place as they did. I’m the only one who can tell it all. I am the person who cut Mr. Jonathan Rutherford with a ten-inch folding knife, approximately. I made two cuts to his face, or rather the forehead—just about one inch long each, with the sharp edge of the blade tip. Also one cut on his chest. Very shallow cuts. In doing this, I acted alone. In fact, I meant to keep the exact nature of my actions secret. I told Mr. Rutherford to play dead. He may have been screaming when I said it. He did scream at one point, as I recollect. But I feel certain he heard me. I bent right to his ear. “Act like you’re dyin’,” I told him. He had been talking too much in general over the whole evening. I tried many times to quiet him down for his own good. I tried to do this in a nice way. A calm way. But once I took the knife, I finally got his attention. He will surely testify to that. I said it would all be for show. No. I never stabbed, struck, nor slapped or kicked Mr. Rutherford in any way. I did not strike him with my hand, knee, or any object. It is possible he was struck by another person. He may have been shoved or otherwise roughed up in a minor sort of way. I don’t know all details of that to a certainty, but I did not witness any physical beating being done to him. For most of the evening, Mr. Rutherford appeared to cooperate willingly with all that was happening. He was offered food and drink over a period of three to four hours. Yes, I myself gave him snacks and cold tea. No, I never heard him say flat-out, “You folks just let me go, now.” He did not say that. He was free to talk and dispute, which he did. Like I say, he talked more than was probably wise on his part. Yes, from his viewpoint, he probably felt he was subjected to harassment. Maybe even intimidation. I expect he did feel that way. Let’s just get it down on your recording right now that this man you keep calling my “confederate” is Robert Franklin Howell. He is known to most as Bobby Frank. The knife belongs to him, that’s correct. He “produced” the knife at an earlier point in the evening. From his pants pocket, I guess, but I didn’t see for sure at the time. Absolutely not—Bobby Frank did not cut anyone. Not in my presence. Not last night, nor at any time in our past history that I have ever observed. Bobby Frank is a relation to me. I’ve known him all my life. He’s a second cousin by a different mother—what some people call middling kin. We’ve always been friendly. No, we are not “intimate partners” and never have been. I’m aware that you are empowered to lie to me, but don’t bother saying that Bobby Frank pinned something on me. Like it was my revenge, snatching the old man, or I had a dire plan from the git-go, or any other shit on that line. He’s not about to say that. And I won’t be pinning stuff on him that he didn’t do, neither. I will only speak what really happened. I pledged to that already. I am 27 years of age. Bobby Frank is about nine years older than me, so that would make him 35 or 36, I guess. I don’t know where he’s been residing lately. He may not have a proper address. It looked like he’d been more or less camping in the house on Duck Creek Road—that house where the incident with Mr. Rutherford took place. That house used to be in our family. It was our Gramma Dot’s place. I don’t know who owns it now. You are aware that I sent my sister to check on the old man, right? When we left him at that house, I stopped and called her. Told her to go over right away and see to his welfare. How he was holding up after what happened. Mr. Rutherford was the principal of Marietta High School for many years. He was in charge when Bobby Frank attended there, and he was still principal later on when I came up. That’s how we knew him, from back when. No, categorically not—we never stalked him, never surveilled him, nothing like that. It was a pure stroke of fate that he happened to exit the Speedway on State Route 60 precisely when he did. Me and Bobby were driving north at that moment. It was me who recognized him. Well, that only makes sense, don’t it? It’s been, like, 20 years since Bobby was in school. Only about ten years for me. Okay, twelve years, to be exact.
“Baby Hold On” by the Dixie Chicks, one of my favorites back then. Bernard happened to be standing with his friends in my field of vision, and when I heard that song, nothing could of been more natural than to raise my eyes on him—the angel-haired boy I’d dreamed about since last spring. That’s when a miracle happened because, somehow-some-way, Bernard glanced at me, right in the same moment. Our eyes hooked, and he didn’t hesitate more than a second—he walked right over to me. The gap between us was, maybe, twelve feet, but it felt like he was flying across the whole Ohio River to a separate world where I was living my little-small life. He put out a hand. His face had a sweet, kind of lopsided, grin. His voice said, “Shall we dance?” I had never heard anybody, let alone a kid around my age, say a thing like “Shall we dance?”
There are two family/community dynamics within this novel... One is that the town is divided by those who are rich and those who are poor...
Also, one family has divided as well because of two major events... LaDene's older brother was killed in the war and thereafter their father changed... And, the side of the family from which they split was involved with criminal activities. LeDene's father had turned to religion to try to understand the loss of his one and only son in battle...
Effie had long since quit King’s Way, after she got called to account in the middle of Contrition for her car being noticed with a bumper sticker that said “WTF,” in reference to George Bush (“W,” that is). Not only blasphemous language (implied), it disrespected our God-appointed President, so Effie had some ’splainin’ to do. I understood full well this was the same reason why I was headed two states away with my thick ankles and bread-dough belly. Yes, I accepted it. Bowing out quietly should be easier than living under the judgment of everyone I knew, and everyone my family deemed important. But would it actually turn out any easier? That kind of thing is tough to measure, isn’t it?
“Don’t gawk,” Blake said. “Work.” She hit me a sharp blow with the 15-inch stick of PVC pipe. The one she carried was fitted with a three-way joint that left red half-moons on my wrist. I gasped from surprise almost more than from pain—she whipped that thing out and struck so fast, with no warning. Of course, I didn’t cry or complain. Just gave her a big-eyed stare for one second before looking down to the dustpile my sweeping had gathered. She bestowed a word of explanation. “You’re lucky to be in the house, here. It’s way better than scrubbing bathrooms, breathing that full-strength bleach.”
LaDene fell in love, allowed herself to get pregnant, thinking she would be getting married and only later knowing that his family would be paying for her to be sent far away to birth the child, after which she would be returned home--she was just 16...
As time goes by she moves on, out of her family's life and when her favorite cousin got out of jail, he looked her up...which led to LaDene handling the knife that cut the local school's principal...
But, WHAT A STORY! In fact as I think about the method, this could actually be written in journal or diary form as a biography... If so, God Bless the young girl LaDene who, really, never had a chance to...be...herself... Because when you're reading it all from her POV, you just gotta listen...
My child was the only thing that existed in the world for that time. She looked around for about two minutes before she fell asleep, but I know she saw me, and I believe she had her own understanding of who I was and why we were together on that first day of her life.
...Some new person inside me wants to go forth and take on the world, right the wrongs and slay the dragons. A new inkling of possibility grips my insides, it wants to get personal, get rough. Before I think about it, I’m on my feet dancing. I swing around the pole, twirl, sashay, jump over oil patches, bound off a bumper. My toes write poems in scattered gravel. My hair sweeps, unloosed from its captured braid. Wind is rising in the cottonwood. At some point I notice I’m in the middle of the parking lot. I lean my head back and sing out loud. Not that I know the words—
This book must be experienced as opposed to read... The thing is as I sit her now, I'm not quite sure I even know how it ended... After her cousin found her, there was a lot of drinking and drugs, but that shouldn't affect the reader should it? Tell you what, I'm going to depend upon the Sheriff to actually close out this case... What I know is that LaDene made it out alive, singing about Freedom... and that's enough for me... Just do it! See what happens when a writer does her own thing! Cool! Right?
GABixlerReviews
Note: I didn't get the entire Playlist done. The last words being sung, may or may not have been an actual real song. Also I wasn't sure about which Freedom song was correct...
The hallway felt colder somehow, less enchanted. She carried the baby monitor with her, its plastic warm from her grip. Her husband had gone to bed hours ago, exhausted from work. She understood his fatigue but missed the early days when they'd both been home, taking turns with the baby, discovering their new reality together.
"Laws are for people without the means to transcend them."
Her body was tired—bone-deep exhausted in the way that only new mothers understand—but her mind was still half in the nursery, hovering protectively over the crib. As sleep began to claim her, Lulu's last conscious thought was of gratitude—for the perfect child sleeping down the hall, for the husband breathing beside her, for the home that held them all safely within its walls. Everything that mattered in her world was here, protected, secure.
Clarissa's hands shook so badly she had to try three times to fit the key into the ignition. Annie's cries from the back seat had escalated to a full-throated wail that matched the storm brewing inside her chest. The birth certificate lay on the passenger seat where she'd tossed it, the manila envelope splayed open like a wound. Forgery. The word repeated in her mind with each beat of her heart. Not a clerical error or a bureaucratic mishap, but a deliberate deception crafted by someone—most likely her own mother. Clarissa drew in a deep breath, trying to steady herself as she reached for her phone—one more avenue to explore before confronting LaToya directly. "Shh, Annie, please," she pleaded, twisting in her seat to look at her daughter. Annie's face had flushed a deep red, tiny fists batting at the air as if fighting invisible demons. "I know, baby. I know. Everything feels wrong to me, too." She performed a quick Google search, fingers tapping impatiently against the steering wheel as the results loaded. Memphis General Hospital. Main switchboard. The number glowed on her screen like a lifeline. She pressed the call button, then engaged the car's Bluetooth system. Annie's cries competed with the ringing phone, creating a chaotic soundtrack to her racing thoughts. "Memphis General Hospital, how may I direct your call?" A woman's crisp voice emerged from the car speakers. "Records department, please," Clarissa said, then added, "Birth records, specifically." "One moment." Music filled the car—a tinny rendition of something classical, interrupted periodically by a recorded voice assuring her that her call was important. Clarissa's leg bounced against the floor mat, a nervous habit she'd never been able to break. She reached into the back seat, finding Annie's tiny hand with her fingers. The baby grasped her index finger tightly, her cries subsiding slightly at the contact. "It's going to be okay," Clarissa whispered, unsure if she was reassuring Annie or herself. "We'll figure this out." The hold music had cycled through three complete iterations when Annie's fussing escalated again. Clarissa unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed awkwardly into the back seat, contorting her body in the small space. She offered the baby her pinky finger to suck on—a temporary pacifier until she could find the real one buried somewhere in the diaper bag. "Birth Records, this is Administrator Grayson." A man's voice suddenly cut through Annie's whimpers, startling them both. Clarissa scrambled back to the driver's seat, breathless from the quick movement. "Yes, hello. My name is Clarissa Jones. I'm trying to verify my birth records from February 16th, 1993." She could hear the clicking of computer keys in the background as the administrator responded, "Give me just a moment to access that time period. Our records from the nineties were digitized about five years ago, so this shouldn't take long." More clicking followed. Clarissa found herself holding her breath, the air trapped in her lungs like the truth trapped in her past. Annie had quieted temporarily, distracted by a toy attached to her car seat. "Jones, you said? Clarissa Jones?" the administrator confirmed. "Yes. February 16th, 1993." Her voice sounded strange to her own ears, too high and tight. The clicking stopped. "I'm sorry, Ms. Jones, but I don't show any record of your birth at Memphis General during that time period. I've checked a month in either direction as well, in case there was a dating error." Clarissa closed her eyes, the final hope she'd been clinging to dissolving like sugar in hot water. "Could the records have been lost during digitization? Or misfiled somehow?" "It's extremely unlikely," the administrator replied, his professional tone softened with what might have been sympathy. "The digitization process was thorough, with multiple quality checks. If you were born at Memphis General during that period, there would be a record. We've even kept the original paper records in storage as backup." "I see." Clarissa's voice sounded hollow, disconnected from the turmoil churning inside her. "Was there anything else I could help you with today?" "No. Thank you for checking." She ended the call before he could respond, her finger jabbing at the screen with unnecessary force. The car interior fell silent except for Annie's soft babbling and the persistent tick of the hazard lights Clarissa hadn't realized she'd activated. She stared straight ahead, not seeing the parking lot, the county records building, or the people moving between them. Instead, she saw her mother's face when she'd handed over the birth certificate—the forced casualness, the way her eyes had never quite met Clarissa's. She saw the empty spaces on the walls where baby pictures should have been. She saw Jessica's face in that high school hallway years ago, a mirror image staring back at her with identical blue eyes and the same crescent-shaped birthmark behind her ear. Slowly, Clarissa turned to look at Annie in the rear-view mirror. Her daughter had settled, fascinated by the toy dangling from the handle of her car seat. Those same blue eyes. That same wavy hair was beginning to sprout on her tiny head. And on the left side, behind her ear, the same crescent birthmark—only on the opposite side from Clarissa's own. "We deserve to know," she whispered, meeting her reflection's gaze in the mirror. The face that looked back at her was no longer confused or desperate but hardened with resolve. "No more lies. No more running." She started the engine properly this time, her hands steady as she shifted into drive. She knew where she needed to go. LaToya had spent twenty-three years constructing an elaborate fiction, six of those years literally running from the truth. But that ended today. For Annie's sake. For her own sake. And perhaps even for Jessica's. As she pulled out of the parking lot, Clarissa remembered the first time she'd seen Jessica in that high school hallway. The shock of recognition had rippled through her body like an electrical current, setting off alarms she'd been too young to understand fully. Now those same alarms blared with new urgency and purpose. Whatever the truth was—however painful or complicated—she would face it head-on. She checked Annie once more in the rear-view mirror, drawing strength from her daughter's innocent gaze, then turned the car toward her parents’ house.
~~~~
Warning: This book contains baby kidnapping scenes
You choose, but the scene to say a second child Ranks 10 in my opinion...
In the Prologue, readers are immediately confronted with a mother and father who has just settled in for a night's sleep, with a baby monitor nearby so that they could hear if their new baby cries...
Instead other sounds and smells come racing into their bedroom... The house is on fire and they cannot get out of their bedroom door. They get out through their room's window... The mother carries the baby monitor in her hands as she gets out and then screams to the firemen that there is a child in the house, pointing out her room...
The baby monitor never picks up anything during that long night..
As often is the case with Prologues, you will be left at the point where the prologue ends and the book is broken down into three parts and epilogue... One hint, there are name changes, so be on the alert...
Nothing in her demeanor suggested the weight of what she'd done, the lives she'd shattered by taking Ellie. The ordinariness of her actions made my blood simmer with quiet rage.
I know, I know, this type of story is very hard to read. You will, however, be amazed in the twists and turns that the author presents to us to begin to potentially carve out the answer to the mystery... Actually, there are two kidnappings many years apart. The second is when Eva Rae Thomas, FBI, becomes involved and represents the major part of the book... beginning at Chapter 1... Thomas' daughter's new baby has been kidnapped. And they have on tape who had picked her up, as a nurse, and succeeded in walking out of the hospital! Thus that investigation begins!
I shot Matt a grateful glance. He knew when to smooth my rough edges, especially when dealing with other agencies. My personal stake in this case was clouding my professional judgment, and we both knew it.
That's how you might miss the extraordinary scenes that begin in Part I. Your notice will be drawn by the word "Then" and will take you into another subplot that runs parallel with the second kidnapping...
"You're a cop," she hissed, the words carrying the weight of the ultimate prison betrayal. She slid away from me on the bench, putting distance between us. "You’re a disgusting pig."
Within the first chapter you will see the FBI grandmother decide to get herself placed in the women's prison. Their investigation had shown that the woman who kidnapped her granddaughter has a sister in prison. Eva's plan is to get close to that sister and try to discover what she can about the kidnapping... But there was not enough time and she was attacked by the inmates!
Pinewood Heights had been transformed for Clarissa. It was no longer just the town she'd fled; it was now a map of deception and lost possibilities, of lives that should have intersected but were kept deliberately apart. Eight blocks had never seemed so vast a distance.
Folks, this book is so complex with twists and turns that it is not easy to share much without giving the storyline away... I do want to highlight with just a comment that a favorite character for me was Clarissa who was the first child kidnapped. Her entire life was being raised in lies, lies, lies... Her story does not end like the second baby kidnapped... The author chose to merely close out what happened to Clarissa. For me, it wasn't enough--but then, as we all have begun to realize when somebody around us lies about about anything and everything, you can be sure that somebody is going to be either hurt or dead soon. Are we learning anything about how lying can change each person's life drastically? This one story will reveal so much!
Twenty-three years of living someone else's version of her life, of carrying questions she hadn't even known to ask, crashed over her in waves.
Finally, I was holding my breath as Eva Rae promises to find her granddaughter and then see the thrilling action that takes readers into a final totally unbelievable airplane scene that I would rank, itself, as a 10! Each character that is in that scene is so finely written and merged into paragraph after paragraph that readers feel as if they are watching what each character is doing while ensuring that they perform as necessary to get everybody landed and home alive! An outstanding climatic ending to a unbelievably shocking tale of what happens when selfish people choose to act for their own gratification without thought of others...
"But you have no right to take my granddaughter from her mother." "An eye for an eye, Agent Thomas," he replied, cold satisfaction settling over his features. "You took my family, so I took yours." His finger caressed the trigger of his gun almost lovingly. The blood loss was making it increasingly difficult to think clearly. My arm trembled slightly with the effort of holding my weapon steady, and a chill that had nothing to do with the desert night began spreading through my limbs. If I passed out now, Ellie would be gone forever. Christine would never see her daughter again. I had one card left to play. "Take me instead," I said, the words deliberate and clear despite the heaviness of my tongue. "I'm the one you want. The one who destroyed your family. Not Ellie."
How shall I phrase my final recommendation? For some, the emotional impact of what happens when a baby is kidnapped out of what was a safe place, is a traumatic experience. It is tragic! On the other hand, when you can learn just how these types of criminal actions occur--and how easily it can happen--then I think it is a "must-read" for those who care about the mother-child relationship...
I've read Willow Rose before and this one was the very best. She's already a top author, but her ability to keep multiple plots going at the same time for an ultimate perfect closing is a spectacular achievement!
Why Federal Oversight of Education Remains Essential: Lessons from the Front Lines
By Michael A. Smith, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Assistant Professor
As legislative proposals circulate to dismantle federal education programs and return funding exclusively to state control, I find myself compelled to speak from a perspective shaped by nearly four decades in higher education and a childhood spent in one of America's most educationally disadvantaged states. My experience—spanning ten degrees, twelve years teaching in Christian education, decades teaching graduate and undergraduate courses across multiple institutions and socioeconomic contexts, and research in both American history and educational systems—has taught me a fundamental truth: when it comes to educational equity and excellence, decentralization is not a panacea. It is, in fact, a dangerous regression to a class-based system we worked decades to overcome.
The GI Bill: How Federal Investment Built the Middle Class
Before we dismantle federal involvement in education, we must remember what federal investment created. When President Truman faced the challenge of millions of returning troops after World War II, he confronted a potential economic catastrophe. The GI Bill was not just veteran support—it was a revolutionary reimagining of who could access higher education in America.
Before the GI Bill, college was the exclusive domain of the wealthy. Universities were finishing schools for the privileged class, not engines of social mobility. But millions of "regular guys"—men who would never have dreamed of university education—came home, went to school, earned degrees, and formed the great American middle class that became the envy of the world. They did not just gain credentials; they gained critical thinking skills, professional networks, and most importantly, aspirations for their children. They wanted the same opportunities for the next generation.
This was not an accident of the free market. This was not state-level innovation. This was deliberate federal policy that democratized education and transformed American society. It proved that when you invest in education broadly rather than limiting it to those who can afford it, everyone benefits—the individuals, the economy, and the nation's competitive position.
Now we are being asked to dismantle the mechanisms that continue this legacy. Please make no mistake: destroying federal education programs returns us to the old system where the privileged class controls access to the primary tool of social mobility. And that is not a bug—for some, it is a feature.
The Historical Record Speaks Clearly
I entered eighth grade in 1972, eighteen years after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. My Southern state had dragged its feet for nearly two decades, employing every legal maneuver and political tactic to avoid integration. This was not an accident. This was policy. This was the deliberate use of state-level control to maintain a social order built on inequality, including educational disparities that preserved economic hierarchies.
When we discuss returning educational authority to the states, we must reckon with this history. Federal intervention in education did not emerge from bureaucratic overreach—it emerged from necessity. It appeared because, left to their own devices, states routinely failed their most vulnerable students. The GI Bill worked precisely because it was federal, universal, and not subject to state-level gatekeeping that would have excluded many veterans based on race, class, or geography.
The resistance to Brown was not simply about race, though racism was certainly its animating force. It was about power…the power to control what children learned, who had access to quality education, and ultimately, who would have the tools to challenge existing hierarchies. Access to education is access to economic mobility, and those who benefit from the current class structure have always understood this better than those fighting for broader access.
The "Slow Learner" States and the Reversal of Progress
My home state remains near the bottom of national education rankings. It continues to struggle with racism, misogyny, and patriarchal structures that many other parts of the country have at least begun to address. This is not coincidental, nor is it primarily a function of poverty, though economic challenges certainly compound the problem. It is, in significant measure, a function of political will—or rather, the strategic lack thereof.
States that benefit from keeping their populations "manageable,” less educated, less critically engaged, and less equipped to challenge authority have little incentive to improve educational outcomes when left solely to their own discretion. Education is power. An educated populace asks uncomfortable questions. They recognize manipulation. They demand accountability. They organize for better wages and working conditions. They vote based on analysis rather than tribal loyalty. Those who advocate local control apparently close their eyes to the incessant battles that go on with local school boards over religion, book bannings, and culture war issues, which make it difficult to find citizens willing to serve in such a chaotic and dysfunctional environment.
The sons and daughters of those GI Bill recipients expected quality public education for their children. They had seen what education could do. They had experienced social mobility. Federal standards and programs helped deliver on that promise—imperfectly, but meaningfully. Now we are told that those very programs are the problem, that states should be free to chart their own course without federal "interference."
But we know what that course looks like. We have seen it. We have lived it.
Myth of Local Accountability
Proponents of state control often invoke the principle of local accountability, arguing that communities know best what their children need. This sounds reasonable until you examine what "local control" has historically meant in practice—and whom it has traditionally served.
In my years teaching history, I have had students from states where textbooks present the Civil War as primarily about "states' rights" rather than slavery, where evolution is treated as a controversial theory rather than established science, and where American history is sanitized to remove uncomfortable truths about genocide, slavery, and systemic oppression. This is not education—it is indoctrination designed to produce citizens who will not question the narratives that maintain existing power structures.
I teach courses in composition, rhetoric, and academic writing. The students who arrive from states with weaker educational systems face a steeper climb. They have been denied not just content knowledge, but the critical thinking skills necessary for genuine intellectual development. They have learned to memorize and recite rather than analyze and question. This is not their failing—it is a systemic one, the predictable result of educational systems designed more to produce compliant workers than thoughtful citizens capable of economic advancement.
The GI Bill veterans understood something crucial: education is the great equalizer, but only when it is actually equal. When states control standards and funding without federal oversight, education becomes a tool for maintaining class distinctions rather than overcoming them.
The Federal Role: Guarantor of Opportunity
The Department of Education, for all its imperfections, serves a crucial function: it ensures that children in Mississippi have access to at least some of the same opportunities as children in Massachusetts. It provides funding that poorer states could never generate independently. It enforces civil rights protections that many states would abandon without federal oversight. It establishes basic standards that prevent a complete race to the bottom.
Just as the GI Bill did not ask whether veterans "deserved" education or whether their home states valued higher learning, federal education programs recognize that educational opportunity is a right, not a privilege to be granted or withheld based on ZIP code or state politics.
Those pushing to eliminate federal education programs often come from states that have never needed them—states with strong tax bases, well-funded schools, and populations that value and invest in education. They forget, or choose to ignore, that their own students benefit from competing with peers who have had access to federally supported programs. They forget that American competitiveness—the very competitiveness built by those GI Bill-educated workers—depends on educational excellence across the nation, not just in privileged enclaves.
What We Risk Losing: The Death of Meritocracy
In my dissertation research on Dr. Charles H. Townes, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who co-invented the laser, I have been struck by how his intellectual development depended on access to quality education in an era when such access was far from guaranteed, even for a white male in the early twentieth-century South. Townes succeeded despite limitations, not because of them. The GI Bill and subsequent federal education programs were designed to ensure that capability, not class background, determined educational access.
How many brilliant minds have we lost because state-level decisions prioritized other concerns over educational investment? How many potential innovators, entrepreneurs, scientists, and leaders never got the chance that federal programs might have provided? And how many more will we lose if we return to a system where educational opportunity depends primarily on family wealth and state priorities?
As I grade papers from students across the country, I see the legacy of both systems. I see students from well-funded districts who have been taught to write, research, and think critically—often the grandchildren of GI Bill recipients who valued education because it changed their lives. And I see students from underfunded systems who have been taught to survive standardized tests but lack the foundational skills for college-level work. The latter are no less capable—they have been less served. Without federal standards and funding, those gaps will only widen until higher education once again becomes what it was before 1944: the exclusive preserve of those born to privilege.
The Contemporary Context: Class Warfare by Other Means
We must also recognize that the current push to dismantle federal education programs does not exist in a vacuum. It is part of a broader project to restructure American society along lines that privilege certain groups while limiting opportunities for others—essentially reversing the democratization of opportunity that the GI Bill began.
Having researched and written extensively on Christian nationalism and threats to democratic institutions, I recognize the patterns: the rhetoric of "freedom" deployed to justify policies that actually constrain freedom for the majority; the invocation of "parental rights" used to mask efforts to control curriculum and limit exposure to diverse perspectives; the claim of government overreach made by those seeking to impose their own ideological vision while dismantling the mechanisms that created the middle class.
States that want to teach a sanitized version of American history, that want to pretend systemic racism ended in 1965, that want to treat LGBTQ+ students as invisible, that wish to prevent discussions of climate change or economic inequality—these states do not need "local control." They have plenty of control already. What they want is freedom from accountability, freedom from standards that require them to educate all their students effectively, and freedom from federal protections that ensure education remains a path to advancement rather than a system of class reproduction.
The GI Bill threatened the old order precisely because it educated people who were not "supposed" to be educated. It created economic competitors where there had been compliant labor pools. It produced critical thinkers where there had been deferential workers. The current push to eliminate federal education programs threatens to recreate those old hierarchies, returning us to a world where your life chances are determined at birth by your parents' economic status and your state's political priorities.
A Call to Defend Educational Democracy
I write this not as a defender of bureaucratic inefficiency—federal education programs certainly need reform. I write as someone who has spent a lifetime in education, who has seen what works and what fails, who understands both the theory and the practice, and who has witnessed what happens when educational access is restricted versus when it is expanded.
Federal involvement in education represents an acknowledgment that educational opportunity is a national concern, that we sink or swim together, that Mississippi's students matter as much as Massachusetts's students. It represents the continuation of the GI Bill's revolutionary premise: that capability, not class, should determine educational access.
To dismantle these programs is not to empower states—it is to abandon millions of children to the vagaries of state politics, many in states that have repeatedly and recently demonstrated they will prioritize ideology and control over educational excellence. It is to return to a system where college is once again the exclusive province of the wealthy, where social mobility becomes increasingly rare, and where the middle class created by the GI Bill gradually disappears.
We have run this experiment before. It was called the era before the GI Bill, before Brown v. Board of Education, before Title IX, before the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, before federal student aid programs. We know how it ended: with massive inequality, with generations denied opportunity based on accidents of birth, with American potential squandered because we refused to invest in all our people.
The GI Bill's success proves that federal investment in education works—that it builds prosperity, creates opportunity, and strengthens the nation. Those who now claim that federal education programs are the problem ignore or dismiss the most successful democratization of higher education in human history. They offer us a return to the old system, dressed up in the language of freedom and local control, but leading inevitably back to educational access determined by class and geography rather than ability and effort.
Those who do not learn from history, as Santayana warned, are condemned to repeat it. We cannot afford such repetition. Our students cannot afford it. The American middle class cannot afford it. America cannot afford it.
The question before us is not whether federal education programs are perfect; they are not. The question is whether we will defend the principle that every American child deserves access to quality education, regardless of where they are born or the economic class of their parents. That principle requires federal standards, federal funding, and federal oversight. Not because Washington knows everything, but because history has proven, repeatedly and painfully, what happens when states are left entirely to their own devices—and what happens when the federal government ensures that education remains a public good rather than a private privilege.
I have lived that history. I have taught the children of both systems. And I will not be silent while we prepare to repeat mistakes we spent decades overcoming, destroying the mechanisms that built the American middle class in the name of returning power to states that will use it to recreate the very hierarchies the GI Bill helped dismantle.
Michael A. Smith is an Assistant Professor of History at several institutions and a Ph.D. candidate completing his dissertation on Nobel laureate Dr. Charles H. Townes. He is the author of "From Christian Fundamentalism to Christian Nationalism: A Primer Detailing the Danger to America" (2024) and has taught at the college level for nearly four decades.
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