A powerful read from an impressive new voice, Freedom’s Child is an intricate portrait of a crass, swears-like-a-sailor woman who has lost everything and is fueled by an unabated fervor to find her daughter.
Contrary to her name, Freedom feels trapped, even though she’s on the other side of the country and a decade removed from her former life. Labeled as the promiscuous town drunk in a small Oregon community, she finds herself waxing in and out of suicidal thoughts. This isn’t what she wanted for her life, but it’s what she was assigned by the Witness Protection detail. The alcohol and self-inflicted psychological abuse serve as her own punishment for letting her life get so lurid.
Freedom’s shaken from this sluggish state when she hears news of Michael Delaney’s release from jail—and then silence from her estranged daughter’s Facebook page. She has to find her daughter before they do—the Delaney Boys, those Mastic Beach miscreants, her brothers-in-law. They’re out to get Freedom any way they can, because of what she did or what she was accused of, and what she would gladly let happen again if given the chance: the murder of her husband. Thus begins Freedom’s cross-country road trip to redemption and to clear the debt she’s harbored for 20 years. Along the way she encounters new and old friends who help her discover the person she should have been all this time.
Visceral and brazen, Jax Miller’s debut is an engrossingly raw exposé of one woman’s reparation, knotted with storylines from the dirty underbelly of biker bars, Native American legends, religious cults and one shocking plot twist you’ll never see coming. Congratulations to Miller for a standout first novel. You’ll read nothing like it!
