Survival

I like books and movies about survival. The Journey of Natty Gann is a movie I could watch again and again, and I’ve always enjoyed books like Swiss Family Robinson and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Each of these stories is about surviving in a harsh world against challenging odds. There are many recent survival stories of the post-apocalyptic or zombie genre, but I prefer the classics. I can more easily relate to characters who are realistic and situations that are plausible. That’s why I wanted to write a survival story. My publisher expects to launch my latest novel, I Want to Go Home, in September.

I Want to Go Home follows the Jordan family of James City County, Virginia on their journey from middle-class comfort to homelessness. Twenty-eight-year-old Abigail (Abby) Jordan tells the story as a memoir. Her journey begins when she is fifteen and learns that her father, Terry Jordan, is dying. She assumes her family is financially solid, that her mother, Elizabeth, will keep her and her two younger brothers, Pete and Joey, safe and secure after their father’s death. But that’s not what happens.

Abby plans to go to college and become a documentary film maker. Instead, she must spend the summer before her senior year, taking care of her brothers while her mother works at a minimum-wage job. A series of unfortunate events plunges the family further into debt. They end up losing their house and living in a run-down motel near Colonial Williamsburg.

As Elizabeth turns to alcohol to numb the pain of grief and overwhelming responsibility, her family becomes increasingly isolated and fearful. Abby is forced to take charge of her brothers and to “parent” her mother. Eventually, Elizabeth overdoses and ends up in a coma, and social services finds out that Abby and her brothers are living on their own.

When two social services agents show up at the low-rent motel, they threaten to take the Jordan kids into custody. While their mother is still hospitalized and unresponsive, Abby and her brothers run away in the middle of the night during an especially cold Williamsburg winter. Abby takes her mother’s social security card and driver's license and, assuming Elizabeth’s identity, withdraws a few hundred dollars from her checking account.

After living in their car for a couple of days, the Jordan kids board a train for Washington DC in hopes of finding a shelter. When they arrive at Union Station, they experience true homelessness. I Want to Go Home is a coming-of-age story. It is a journey of hardship, fear, and isolation. Most importantly, it is a journey of life-affirming survival as Abby is compelled to make adult decisions, and through hardship, awakens to an awareness of God’s grace and mercy.

Cindy L. Freeman is the author of two award-winning short stories and three published novels: Diary in the Attic, Unrevealed and The Dark Room. Coming soon from High Tide Publications: I Want to Go Home. Website: www.cindylfreeman.com; Facebook page: Cindy Loomis Freeman. Her books are available through amazon.com or hightidepublications.com