When Mongrel came upstairs with a gun pointing at Maggie, she wasn't about to argue with him. "I mean, he's a great shot and everything, but what if he misses and I end up with brain damage or something? I'm a vegetable for the rest of my life. I ask him if he wants a brownie."
So begins Dakota Hamilton's Freedom's Just Another Word (HarperCollins, $26), a first novel that has been compared to Thelma and Louise. After her Harley-riding, drug-dealing husband turns the gun around, points it at his chest and pulls the trigger, Maggie is caught scrubbing the bloodstains off Mongrel's shirt and is sent to a maximum security prison.
Under the guise of a recovery program, she and her fellow members of Freedom Anonymous escape from prison. "Gritty and vulnerable, naive and streetsmart," the women embark on a road trip that is part love affair, part healing ritual "laced with Native spirituality and the dark prophecies of Maggie's tarot cards."
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[BCBW 1998]