Gary A. Braunbeck Prodigal Blues

Prodigal Blues

Gary A. Braunbeck

Cemetery Dance, May 2006, $40.00, 310 pp.

ISBN: 1587671093

After driving from Cedar Hill to Topeka to sign some papers so his sister can claim her inheritance, janitor Mark Seiber is on his way home when his car breaks down. A helpful police officer refers Mark to a kind tow truck operator-mechanic who informs him the vehicle his bother-in-law lent him cannot be repaired today and the nearest rental place will be open tomorrow. Mark stays at a motel by a truck stop that serves delicious fish dinners.

While eating, Mark notices the young girl he saw three times on the road; she sits at his table and introduces herself as Denise. She insists she was abducted from this rest stop two years ago and warns him. Mark returns to his room. Someone claiming to deliver food knocks on his door. When he opens it, the person who knocks uses a taser on him. When Mark awakens he finds himself prisoner of young adults, all of whom share in common their abduction by a sexual predator Grendel who tortured and scarred them both physically and mentally. They demand Mark take them home to their parents and will not hesitate with the use of brute force to insure he complies. As he gets to know these abused mutilated victims, he sympathizes with them and vows to insure they obtain a happy ending.

There are graphic descriptions of violence that accentuate the underlying message that parents must protect their young ones because sexual predators are deviously clever and nearby. The youthful kidnappers earn the empathy of the audience and Mark once we and he understand their plight. Though disfigured each young adult and child has shown great inner strength not allowing themonster to mentally break them. This is a poignant cautionary thriller that grips readers from the moment the hero is abducted and never slows down until the final twist.

Harriet Klausner