by Michael Van Natta
The 2012 Write Place Book Contest winner is a thrilling novel about a doctor wrongly accused of murdering her patients and a disabled construction worker’s fight for justice.
Fugitive Dr. Maria Sanchez-Kline, wrongly accused of murder, flees into the empty Kansas wheat fields, one step ahead of the law. Can she accept the reality that everything she knew and loved has been taken away?
Orphaned construction worker Leo Rood, finally overcoming the ghosts of his past, is suddenly disabled in a freak accident. How will he cope when he loses all connections to the real world, is forced to go it alone?
Two unconnected lives stolen—but circumstances conspire to bring Leo and Maria together. Living in the low-rent district beneath the Kansas City International Airport flight path, with the law in pursuit of Maria, and Leo descending deeper into paranoia, each battles the fact that life offers no easy street for the disenfranchised.
Just when it seems there is nothing left of their former selves, just when disaster is one leap away, the fates have their say. Can Leo and Maria take back their stolen lives? Can a person ever truly be remade?