Review: A powerful, believable story that kept me turning pages
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 05 2, 2014
*Warning* If you are, or have been, in an abusive relationship, this could trigger flashbacks.  It did for me, although that may be partially why I was "hooked" on the story almost immediately. I had to see this girl saved from her situation. This is a powerful, compelling story. It was well worth the moments of anxiety.Beanie's parents essentially sell her into slavery, forcing her to marry an older man who has enough economic and political clout to get what he wants. The family are Mormons, at a time when polygamy is still the norm, and Beanie will be a third wife--about as low a position in the family as there is. Even that wouldn't be quite so terrible if her new husband had an ounce of compassion.The situation worsens until Beanie fears for her life. With all the courage she can muster, she reaches out to a former music teacher, one of the few people in her life who has shown her kindness. But she only has part of the phone number, the rest having been destroyed when her husband tore up the sheet music it was written on. She tries, anyway, and gets a wrong number that turns out, in the long run, to have been a very right number for her.Beanie's quest for personal freedom plays out against the background of the Kennedy years and the civil rights movement.  It's an exciting story, fraught with peril and narrow escapes, with cruelty offset by random acts of kindness, with despair and hope and unexpected blessings. It  kept me reading "just one more chapter" and another and another.