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  INTO THE FREE

  “In this lovely novel, author Julie Cantrell shows us how our heart’s desire can intersect with God’s plan no matter how many times we deny it, or how blurred the lines between good and evil can sometimes be, and how we can sometimes see the existence of angels in disguise in our lives if we just look hard enough. The story’s protagonist, Millie, is beautifully drawn. Her spunk and spirit carve a place for her in your heart as she battles life’s hardships with truth and grace. By the simple act of learning how to pray, Millie finds her way in the world and into the free. Exquisitely written. Julie Cantrell has created a haunting story that will linger in your heart long after you’ve turned the last page.”

  Karen White, New York Times best-selling author of The Beach Trees

  “Julie Cantrell beautifully renders a vivid past, but her subjects are immediate and eternal—family secrets, love’s many losses, revenge and revelation, and finally redemption. Her characters may buck and brawl and bray against the notion of God in their lives, but there’s no denying He continues to send them into each other’s paths, and Cantrell masterfully introduces them to one another in her wonderfully woven narrative. This book is full of insightful detail and wondrous turns, with an ending that moves in all directions through time like God’s grace.”

  Mark Richard, author of House of Prayer No. 2

  “A lyrical, moving, haunting, wise, brutal, warmhearted, and ultimately freeing and inspiring coming-of-age tale told with poetic honesty. Julie Cantrell is a wonderful writer. She doesn’t just tell a story, she invites you right into it so that you don’t just read it, you live it. Into the Free swept me up and swept me along, and the story and the characters stayed with me—in the very best way—long after I turned the last page.”

  Jennifer Niven, best-selling author of The Ice Master, Velva Jean Learns to Drive, and Velva Jean Learns to Fly

  “Readers will fall in love with spirited young Millie Reynolds, a girl with one eye on the heavens and the other on the savages that occupy our world. Julie Cantrell’s Into the Free is a searing tale of heartache, faith, forgiveness, and doubt set amidst gypsies, angels, addicts, asylums, roughnecks, and rodeo hands.”

  Neil White, author of In the Sanctuary of Outcasts

  “Julie Cantrell writes with the beautiful hand of someone who understands the soft nuance of God’s brushstrokes on the human heart. I’ve underlined my favorite passages of Into the Free and hope that readers new to Ms. Cantrell’s voice will tread slowly, thoughtfully into her story. There is a deep, powerful message resting beneath the surface of her words and one deserving to be discovered.”

  River Jordan, author of Praying for Strangers

  “Saturated in Southern ambiance, Julie Cantrell’s heartbreaking and inspirational story is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Into the Free is the celebration of a vulnerable but fierce young girl facing loss head-on as she bravely seeks her place in a world that threatens despair at every turn.”

  Lynne Bryant, author of Catfish Alley and Alligator Lake

  “Millie Reynolds defines resilience in this powerful story about family, faith, and finding one’s own way.”

  Irene Latham, award-winning author of Leaving Gee’s Bend

  “Julie Cantrell’s compelling story of one young woman’s journey through the choices that lead to freedom drew me in from the very first scene. I simply couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, at least until I neared the end … when I purposefully slowed down, knowing instinctively that I was going to miss Millie Reynolds from Into the Free. I was right.”

  Shellie Rushing Tomlinson, Belle of All Things Southern and national best-selling author of Sue Ellen’s Girl Ain’t Fat, She Just Weighs Heavy

  “Gritty, compelling, and beautifully told, Into the Free will take you into a coming-of-age story filled with heartrending hardship and luminous hope. Julie Cantrell is a writer to watch!”

  Lisa Wingate, best-selling, award-winning author of Blue Moon Bay and Dandelion Summer

  “This is an amazing debut novel with beautifully crafted prose, but be warned: Portions of the story are rather dark and disturbing—not for the timid reader.”

  Melody Carlson, author of Finding Alice

  “I appreciate a novel in which the love of God is woven as seamlessly into the story as it is into real life. Julie Cantrell has written such a novel, full of the kind of human drama and spiritual struggle that we face with every bit as much trepidation and doubt as Millie Reynolds does. I had to check twice to make sure this high-quality work was a debut novel.”

  Nancy Rue, author of Christy Award–winning The Reluctant Prophet

  “Evil abounds in this first novel by Julie Cantrell, but faith prevails. Millie Reynolds is a character readers won’t soon forget. At once she is brave and fragile, victim and heroine, a girl you’ll find yourself rooting for again and again as she transcends unthinkable tragedies and lifts herself Into the Free.”

  Suzanne Supplee, author of Artichoke’s Heart, Somebody Everybody Listens To, and When Irish Guys Are Smiling

  “Julie Cantrell has a sweet and powerful way with a story. She knows how to make friends with a reader. You’re going to fall in love with Into the Free. I did.”

  Don Reid, The Statler Brothers, and author of O Little Town and One Lane Bridge

  INTO THE FREE

  Published by David C Cook

  4050 Lee Vance View

  Colorado Springs, CO 80918 U.S.A.

  David C Cook Distribution Canada

  55 Woodslee Avenue, Paris, Ontario, Canada N3L 3E5

  David C Cook U.K., Kingsway Communications

  Eastbourne, East Sussex BN23 6NT, England

  The graphic circle C logo is a registered trademark of David C Cook.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes,

  no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form

  without written permission from the publisher.

  The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of David C Cook, nor do we vouch for their content.

  This story is a work of fiction. All characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. (Public Domain.)

  LCCN 2011938727

  ISBN 978-0-7814-0424-2

  eISBN 978-0-7814-0800-4

  © 2012 Julie Cantrell

  Published in association with the literary agency of WordServe Literary Group, Ltd., 10152 S. Knoll Circle, Highlands Ranch, CO 80130.

  “Yonder Come the Blues” lyrics written by Ma Rainey in 1926.

  John Steinbeck quotes from Of Mice and Men © 1937 John Steinbeck, published by Penguin in 1993. Quotes from The Grapes of Wrath © 1939 John Steinbeck, published by Penguin in 2006.

  Virginia Woolf quote from The Waves, published in 2005 by Collector’s Library © CRW Publishing.

  “Get Out of Town” lyrics written by Cole Porter for the 1938 musical Leave It to Me!

  F. Scott Fitzgerald quotes from This Side of Paradise, published in 2005 by Modern Library.

  The Team: John Blase, Nicci Jordan Hubert, Amy Konyndyk, Nick Lee, Renada Arens, Karen Athen

  Cover Design: faceoutstudio

  Cover Photos: Shutterstock

  First Edition 2012

  For my mother,

  who taught me to love people for who they are

  and to forgive them for who they are not.

  And for my husband,
<
br />   who taught me to enter the woods and quiet my mind

  so I could hear God.

  And for my children,

  who taught me to hear the songs of the trees

  and to love beyond belief.

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  AfterWords

  A Note Regarding the Word Gypsy

  Reader’s Guide

  Additional Discussion Questions

  Author Interview

  Just for Book Clubs

  Acknowledgments

  Bibliography

  For winter’s rains and ruins are over,

  And all the season of snows and sins;

  The days dividing lover and lover,

  The light that loses, the night that wins;

  And time remembered is grief forgotten,

  And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,

  And in green underwood and cover

  Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

  —Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Atalanta in Calydon”

  CHAPTER 1

  March 1936

  A long black train scrapes across Mr. Sutton’s fields. His horses don’t bother lifting their heads. They aren’t afraid of the metal wheels, the smoking engine. The trains come every day, in straight lines like the hems Mama stitches across rich people’s pants. Ironing and sewing, washing and mending. That’s what Mama does for cash. As for me, I sit in Mr. Sutton’s trees, live in one of Mr. Sutton’s cabins, sell Mr. Sutton’s pecans, and dream about riding Mr. Sutton’s horses, all in the shadow of Mr. Sutton’s big house.

  “He owns the whole planet. Every inch and acre. From sea to shining sea!” I lean over the branch of my favorite sweet gum tree and yell my thoughts down to Sloth, my neighbor. His cabin is next to ours in the row of servants’ quarters on Mr. Sutton’s place. Three small shotgun shacks with rickety porches and leaky roofs. Ours is Cabin Two, held tight by the others that squat like bookends on either side. All three are packed so close together I could spit and hit any of them.

  Sloth kneels in the shade around the back corner of Cabin One. He is digging night crawlers for an afternoon trip to the river. With wrinkled hands, he drops a few thick worms into a dented can of dirt and says, “He don’t own the trains.”

  I can only guess where the boxcars are going and where they’ve been. I pretend they carry “limber lions, testy tigers, and miniature horses wearing tall turquoise hats.” It says that in Fables and Fairy Tales, the tattered book Mama used to read to me until I learned to read by myself.

  I count cars as the train roars past. Fifteen … nineteen.

  “Where you think it’s going?” I ask Sloth.

  “Into the free,” he says, dropping another long, slick worm into the can and standing to dust dirt from his pants. He limps back to his porch, slow as honey. About six years back, he shot clear through his own shoe while cleaning his hunting rifle. Left him with only two toes on his right foot. He’s walked all hunched over and crooked ever since. He started calling himself an old sloth, on account of having just two toes. The name stuck, and even though Mama still calls him Mr. Michaels, I can’t remember ever calling him anything but Sloth.

  I keep counting to twenty-seven cars and watch the train until its tail becomes a tiny black flea on the shoulder of one of Mr. Sutton’s pecan trees. Seventeen of those trees stand like soldiers between the cabins and the big house, guarding the line between my world and his. It’s a good thing Mr. Sutton doesn’t care much for pecans. He lets me keep the money from any that I sell.

  I watch the train until it disappears completely. I don’t know what Sloth thinks free looks like, but I imagine it’s a place where nine-year-old girls like me aren’t afraid of their fathers. Where mothers don’t get the blues. Where Mr. Sutton doesn’t own the whole wide world.

  I can’t help but wonder if free is where Jack goes when he packs his bags and heads out with the Cauy Tucker Rodeo crew.

  Jack is my father, only I can’t bring myself to call him that.

  Sloth wobbles up three slanted steps to his porch. Mama sings sad songs from our kitchen. Mr. Sutton’s horses eat grass without a care, as if they know they aren’t mine to saddle. I climb higher in the sweet gum and hope the engineer will turn that train around and come back to get me. Take me away, to the place Sloth calls the free.

  “Can’t believe you snapped my line,” Sloth teases, reminding me about our fishing trip last week when I hooked the biggest catfish I’ve ever seen. He stretches string around a hook to repair the cane pole. Shaking his head, he says, “I woulda never let that cat get away.”

  I climb higher in my tree and watch him get ready for today’s trip to the river. It’s just after lunch and, if I squint, I can see all sorts of fancy hats scattering into shops around the square. I figure most of those people have never seen a catfish snap their line or pulled wiggling worms from a shady spot of soil. “Aren’t you glad it’s Saturday?”

  Sloth nods. He knows I’m happy not to have school today. Between helping Mama with her clients’ laundry and helping Sloth with his chores, it’s all I can do to squeeze school into my weeks.

  I turn back toward town, where families leave the diners. They look like ants, moving back to their nests right on schedule. “All that time wasted sitting inside,” I tell Sloth. “They probably can’t even hear the trees.”

  Sloth laughs. But it’s a gentle laugh. One that means he’s on my side.

  In our town, the trees sing. I’m not the first to hear them. The Choctaw named this area Iti Taloa, which means “the song trees.” Then some rich Virginian bought up all the land. He built railroads and brought in a carousel all the way from Europe. I guess he figured if colorful mermaids could spin round and round to music, right in the middle of the park, no one would care when he forced most of the Choctaw out and planted a big white sign on each end of town: Welcome to Millerville. The new name never took. Most people still call it Iti Taloa, and the postmaster will accept mail both ways. Regardless of what folks write on their envelopes, I just call it home.

  More than once I’ve heard Jack say to Mama, “I don’t guess your people mind livin’ on stolen land.” There’s always a bitter sting in his voice when he spits out your people. I figure it’s because his mother was Choctaw.

  “Your people too,” Mama argued once. “Your father was Irish, wasn’t he?” I’m pretty sure that was the last time she dared to disagree with Jack.

  Another thing Jack says about Iti Taloa is “We may not have gold or diamonds, but we do have good dirt.” Because of that dirt, three railroads cross through town to load cotton and corn, so even when the rest of the country has sunk into the Great Depression, jobs here still pay people enough to splurge at Millerville General, Boel’s Department Store, or even the rodeo, which is based smack-dab in the center of town.

  If you could look down from the heavens to steal a glance of Iti Taloa, you would need to look just above the Jac
kson Prairie, nearly to the Alabama border. Here, you’ll find tree-covered slopes that rise six hundred feet with deep river valleys carved in between. Here, where farmland spreads like an apron around the curves of the waterways, you’ll find pines, oaks, magnolias, and cedars. And here, in the limbs of those trees, is where you’ll likely find me, a child of this warm, wild space.

  When I’m not stuck in school or helping Mama and Sloth, I roam barefoot, climbing red river bluffs and drinking straight from the cool-water springs. Each day, I scramble through old-growth hardwoods and fertile fields, pretending I am scouting for a lost tribe or exploring ancient ruins. Other kids in town play with dolls and practice piano. I don’t care much for that. My friends are the trees, and my favorite is this sweet gum. Mostly because she’s planted right in front of our porch, so close I can see Mama’s wedding ring slip loose around her bony finger while she drops carrots into a black iron pot. When I was too small to climb, I named my tree Sweetie. Now, every day, I climb Sweetie’s limbs and listen for her songs.

  Right now my tree is not singing. But Mama is. I watch her tie her blonde hair back from her long, thin face. I try to hear the lyrics, but all I hear is the thunder that howls across Mr. Sutton’s horse pasture. I pretend it is the sound of a stomach rumbling. That a dragon needs lunch. Mama watches me from the open kitchen window as she slices more carrots for a pot roast. She stops singing and smiles at me. “Jack’s favorite,” she says, and I don’t think I like pot roast so much anymore.

  I lean back against Sweetie’s trunk and watch the storm easing our way. Mama takes one look at the stack of black clouds and starts talking like the lines in the books she reads. “In Mississippi,” she says, “madness sweeps the floors clean before rolling out with the thunder.”