SPECIAL DELIVERY (KATHI MACIAS) BOOK TWO OF THE "FREEDOM" SERIES

Story Description: 

In book two of the "Freedom" series, readers find Mara fighting against her attraction to Bible college student Jonathan Flannery. Mara also wrestles with risking her own precarious safety to become involved in the rescue of another girl who is pregnant and desperately wants to escape her captors and save her own life as well as her child's.

Halfway around the world in a brothel in Thailand, a young girl is rescued with the promise of being reunited with her younger sister who was adopted by an interracial couple in the States, friends of Jonathan's family. Meanwhile, Jefe, Mara's uncle, who held her as a sex slave in his brothel in San Diego for years-seeks revenge for Mara's testimony that put him behind bars for life.  

Will his underworld connections be successful in kidnapping and killing the girl who believes she has finally won her freedom? 

My Review:

Mara is a waitress at a seafood café earning enough money to rent a room and meet her basic needs.  It has taken her 2 whole years to finally gain citizenship in the United States, free from her homeland of Mexico at last.  Her parents had sold her into slavery, and her uncle, Jefe, who had raped her for the first time and then prostituted her out until his capture and arrest and was sent to prison.  To Mara, she had no family all of them were dead to her.   At nearly 20 years of age, Mara has no interest in finding a man for herself as she’d already had enough of men and their sexually tortuous ways.  She said she’d already had enough of the “male population to last her for several lifetimes.” 

Leah is out of high school and Jonathan has completed two of his four years of Bible College.  Jonathan had come home for Leah’s graduation and will be staying for two months.

Two years earlier, Jonathan had helped break up a human-trafficking ring that forced teens and young children to be sex slaves right in their own San Diego area.  Mara was one of those girls and Leah questions Jonathan now as to whether he still wonders about her and where she eventually ended up.  Jonathan admits that he wonders and things about her often and what is is doing now.  Because of that rescue, Leah and Jonathan’s family are now involved in the ministry of rescuing human-trafficking victims and helping them recover, get established, and begin new and productive lives.

On her way home from work one evening, Mara thinks back to the night she stood in the darkness with a lovely young man who made her feel truly human for the first time a long time.  That man was Jonathan and she wonders now where he is and whether he ever did go to Bible College as he had planned.

Mara's uncle was in jail now serving a life sentence for human-trafficking and prostitution.  Thanks to Mara he won't again see the light of day.  However, her uncle is enraged that she testified against him and doesn't plan on allowing Mara to live happily ever after.  Even in prison, Uncle Jefe has connections. 

What then sets off is a string of page-turning events that will keep you glued to your chair until the last page has been turned.  What a powerfully packed punch this story delivered!!!  I’d highly recommend it to anyone.