Free Passage

What price does war exact for freedom? This is war through the eyes of survivors amidst bloodied fields of victims.

Set during the Civil War, "Free Passage" tells interlinked stories of men, young women & children, whose lives are torn apart by War. Each of them flies

in the face of adversity & each triumphs, though in a very

different way. It begins with the tragedy of the Maguire twins

& introduces Girl, a deaf slave, who finds forbidden love

with a good man, her owner's son, only to have War wrench

them apart. She flees to seek freedom for herself & her

child in Canada. Migrant tinker, Herr Schmidt, seeks across

the war torn States to find his missing daughter, Mina,

finding instead a runaway slave & an orphaned boy caring for

his little brother. The War makes a man of the boy before his

time. Mina escapes her captors & lives by her wits, finding

her way to safety & a future she could once only dream.

EXCERPT, "Girl's Story," Wordgathering, Australia, Dec 2014 & no.71, 2015 Kaleidoscope, USA