Freedom's Child

Starred review from April 6, 2015
Boozing, brawling, and fierce but emotionally fragile, Freedom Oliver has been pissing away her life in witness protection like someone with nothing left to loseâuntil fate unexpectedly offers her one last long shot at redemption in this debut thriller, which hits like a beer bottle to the head. Freedom, a heavily inked redhead known in a former life as Nessa Delaney, is shaken out of her stupor slinging drinks at a biker bar in Painter, Ore., by the release from prison of her vengeance-bent brother-in-law, Matthew. Matthew is a member of the spectacularly sociopathic Delaney clan, headed by a 600-pound coke-dealing matriarch, and he lusts for payback from the woman he blames for framing him for murder. Even worse, the Delaneys may get their hands on the two now-grown children Freedom gave up for adoption, Mason and Rebekah. When Freedom learns that Rebekah has disappeared from her adoptive home in Goshen, Ky., she's but a stolen bike and Glock away from a desperate race to save the daughter she never knew. Some of the cross-country action strains credulity, but between the gutsy heroine and gale-force narrative, you'd be churlish to quibble. Agent: Claudia Ballard, William Morris Endeavor.