Freedom’s Child on March 1st, 2016
Pages: 320
Goodreads
Freedom Oliver has plenty of secrets. She lives in a small Oregon town and keeps mostly to herself. Her few friends and neighbors know she works at the local biker bar; they know she gets arrested for public drunkenness almost every night; they know she’s brash, funny, and fearless.
What they don’t know is that Freedom Oliver is a fake name. They don’t know that she was arrested for killing her husband, a cop, twenty years ago. They don’t know she put her two kids up for adoption. They don’t know that she’s now in witness protection, regretting ever making a deal with the Feds, and missing her children with a heartache so strong it makes her ill.
Then, she learns that her daughter has gone missing, possibly kidnapped. Determined to find out what happened, Freedom slips free of her handlers, gets on a motorcycle, and heads for Kentucky, where her daughter was raised. As she ventures out on her own, no longer protected by the government, her troubled past comes roaring back at her: her husband’s vengeful, sadistic family; her brief, terrifying stint in prison; and the family she chose to adopt her kids who are keeping dangerous secrets.
Written with a ferocious wit and a breakneck pace, Freedom’s Child is a thrilling, emotional portrait of a woman who risks everything to make amends for a past that haunts her still.
The name of this book, Freedom’s Child, piqued my curiosity, and I had never heard of the author, Jax Miller, but when I received this book to read, I dug right in. The book started off with pretty good promise so I was excited to keep reading. Unfortunately, though, that quickly turned south. In all honesty, I lost interest in the book probably about a third of way in, but because I was reading it for the purpose of providing a review, I forced myself complete it.
The main character goes by the name Freedom Oliver, formerly known as Nessa Delaney. Freedom works at a bar in Portland, Oregon and is in the Witness Protection Program. Freedom previously spent two years in jail while waiting for her trial relating to charges that she murdered her cop husband. We don’t hear about who actually did kill the husband (Mark Delaney) until pretty far into this book, but it’s clear that other than the wheelchair-ridden brother with cerebral palsy, the Delaney family is pretty horrible.
Freedom has two kids, but she put them up for adoption while she was in jail. She wants to find them but that means that she will lose her federal protection. This search leads to some crazy situations and seriously violent events. I thought the book might be a mother’s journey to get her kids back and that seemed captivating to me, but as I said above, it kind of went south for me and the characters got old fast.
…And speaking of characters, the characters in this story go from doctors to skinheads to bad cops, from cult worshippers to shaman worshipping Indians. No one in the book seems sane and I kind of felt like I was watching one of those horrible reality shows where everyone is screaming and swearing and acting inappropriate. With those shows, I simply change the channel; with this book, if you are anything like me, you’ll just shut the book.
I received this book from Blogging For Books without cost in exchange for my honest review and unbiased opinion.
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