Well this book is different.  It’s a crime novel with the main crime being the kidnapping of a 17-year old girl, but there are shootings involved with getting her back  if she wants to come back. These shootings involve some other things like drugs and money. But there’s also a very light heart-warming and humorous touch to a the story and that’s well done. . 

Freedom Road
by William Lashner  
2019/ (411 pages)
Read by James Daniels 10h 57m
Rating: 8/B – literary crime

The book opens in 1968 when a young law student named Oliver Cross meets a friend near a Vietnam War protest in Chicago. They get involved in the protest and Oliver meets a young woman from Amherst. The next thing we know he’s 50 years older and just getting out of jail. It appears that he and Helen, the young woman, were together for all those years until she died a few years prior. That’s okay – Helen still talks to him, advises him, loves him dearly.
 
Oliver and Helen have a financially successful son and daughter-in-law plus two granddaughters who also live in town, but where his son’s family lives in an seriously upscale home, Oliver’s place is a small run little property which he doesn’t clean up at all.  He’s angry and depressed.

One day the police come to visit Oliver and it turns out his 17-year old grand-daughter is missing and his son has called the police. The cops check Oliver’s criminal record and taking his parole officer along, go visit.  

Oliver is very upset that Erica is missing.  He needs to do something about this, not wait around for the police to figure it out.  He starts asking questions and it turns out she’s got a new boyfriend who is not good news.  And thus begins a story in which the background is just as important as the ongoing events.

I generally enjoyed this – it’s longer than it needs to be but it’s an interesting tale of three generations of rebellion.