A mother’s choice to end the abusive marriage she’s silently coped with comes with more baggage than freedom, and it takes the hands of a tiny town and a large dose of trust to finally free her.
MAZIE BABY tells the heart-wrenching story of Mazie Reynolds – a wife, mother, and victim of domestic abuse. Ever since meeting Cullen Reynolds at a dark bar some twenty years prior, she’s found herself glued to his side, for better and for worse. After Cullen’s would be music career falters early on in their marriage and not long after their daughter Ariel comes along, so too does the happiness that their bond promised. Cullen finds solace and comfort in beating and strangling his wife, drowning out his own pain in her tears and liquor. Time and time again though, Cullen is apologetic, promising he’ll never do it again, and holding onto the memory of the man she fell in love with, Mazie takes him back and forgives him. But years later, Mazie knows that his promises are as empty as the woman she’s become.
When an escape plot runs in a direction originally not accounted for, Mazie packs up her and Ariel to head on a road trip. With dyed hair, fake names, and an alibi for every new person, Ariel and Mazie end up in the sleepy town of Cornwell, Canada, and into a secretarial job at the law office of Norman Day, Criminal Defense Attorney. What she finds in Norman is not only kindness, but also similarity as Mazie works on a case that all too closely mirrors her own hidden past. When her past eventually comes to handcuff her and take her away, Mazie must make the choice to display her life and her tales to save the future and the freedom and happiness she so desperately wants and deserves.
Told in third person, MAZIE BABY hooks you first with its descriptive sentences and believable characters, who right off the bat you can imagine being your own next door neighbors. Then it hooks you with the truth. Author Julie Frayn does not beat around the bush when she describes Mazie’s fear when her husband comes home and loses himself in liquor and rage; nor does she shy away from building up the tension in the house, from the second Cullen gets upset until Mazie, now bruised and bleeding, tucks Ariel into bed.
While the story isn’t definably a happy tale, it is an honest one that makes you fly through the pages in the hopes that Mazie makes it out free of her past in the end. The story truly is a tale of how “sometimes innocent people must defend themselves” and that opening up yourself to trust again is the best way to mend a battered soul.
The dialogue is raw, the character development happens at a life-like pace, and the story line – though depicting a desperate mother – never wavers on the edge of fantasy. Though fiction, MAZIE BABY could arguably be a firsthand autobiography for someone.
~IndieReader