First published 2015
Darlene loses her husband and turns to drugs to numb her grief. When someone offers her a job that sounds too good to be true, she takes it and disappears from her eleven-year-old son Eddie's life. The job turns out to be a trap. A company called Delicious Foods transports Darlene to a remote farm where she becomes trapped in forced labor. The farm keeps workers enslaved by providing them with constant drugs and claiming they owe money for food and housing. Eddie searches desperately for his missing mother while Darlene struggles in the fields, fighting both her captors and her addiction. The story unfolds through three voices: Darlene, Eddie, and the drug itself, which serves as an unreliable narrator. As mother and son each fight to survive and find each other, they must overcome both external oppression and internal demons. Their bond drives them toward freedom and possible reunion.
Genres: fiction, drama, addiction, african-american, crime, contemporary
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-drama, found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Delicious Foods, Remote Farm
Period: 21st-century
10 pages · Audio CD · Little, Brown & Company
Content warnings: addiction, drug-use, slavery, substance-abuse