Free Danner

Free Danner was his name as a kid. Now 22, he's just Danner and he really is free, after spending ten years in Juvy for what he considered an act of mercy. Danner's determined to find the father who doesn't know he exists. Everybody's out to screw him, especially the big shot who hired him as a hit-man-in-training. So what's a guy to do? The right thing, if only Danner could distinguish right from wrong.

Free Danner is only eleven and already damaged from an unstable lifestyle when his party-girl mom sends him to live with her parents on their Southern Illinois farm. The generation gap proves harder on the rebellious city boy than his grandparents and soon results in a tragedy so horrific no one could've predicted it. Fast forward to Danner at twenty-two, by-passing those years he spent in the juvenile system and then some. He locates his mom Lark in St. Louis and demands she name the clueless dad. Lark's not sure but with Danner's not-so-gentle persuasion, she comes up with three possibilities. Danner's search for his father and a better life takes him on a crisscross journey to Las Vegas, Southern California, and the Florida Panhandle. Most of the people he encounters along the way either wind up dead or wanting Danner out of their lives. But they don't know the real Danner or what being free means to him.

This coming-of-age novel for readers over 18 borders on the edgy side, as in dark humor with a cast of memorable, off-beat characters.