Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.

Title: Wire Mesh Mothers

Author: Elizabeth Massie

Narrator: Kathy Bell Denton

Format: Unabridged

Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins

Language: English

Release date: 01-18-13

Publisher: Crossroad Press

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 2 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Suspense

Publisher's Summary:

It all started with the best of intentions. Kate McDolen, an elementary school teacher, knew she had to protect one of her students, little 8-year-old Mistie, from parents who were making her life a living hell. So Kate packed her bags, quietly picked up Mistie after school one day, and set off with her toward what she thought would be a new life. How could she know she was driving headlong into a nightmare?

The nightmare began when Tony jumped into the passenger seat of Kate's car, waving a gun. Tony was a dangerous girl, more dangerous than anyone could have dreamed. She didn't admire anything except violence and cruelty, and she had very different plans in mind for Kate and little Mistie. The cross-country trip that followed would turn into a one-way journey to fear, desperation... and madness.

Members Reviews:

Excellent book, excellent author

Dark road trip, wonderfully written.

Dark, but ultimately uplifting.

Kate McDolen, severely depressed by an unhappy home life and faltering teaching career, seeks salvation in what her troubled mind tells her is a selfless act. When Kate encounters second grader Mistie Dawn Henderson, an obvious victim of child abuse, she kidnaps her, vowing to save the child from further abuse.

But fate intervenes as she initiates her poorly conceived plan. Kate and her young charge are taken hostage by "Tony," a bitter teenage girl whose own frustrations have led her to rob a local gas station at gunpoint. Thus is formed a strange family unit consisting of the teacher and the two children, all victims of varying forms of abuse. Ostensibly traveling to Texas so that Tony can be reunited with her absentee father, the trio begins a journey that will lead them to face their destinies.

Written with energy, gravity and grace, Wire Mesh Mothers is superior work from a superior stylist. Told from the rotating viewpoints of the three scarred heroines, it is a grim tale of despair and redemption, a trek through a wasteland of abuse and shattered lives. Although the initial theme seems to be that no good deed goes unpunished, Massie's overriding messages of hope, redemption and the importance of family ultimately emerge as the narrative moves towards its riveting and moving finale.

Wire Mesh Mothers is one of the most absorbing novels I've read in a long time, both for the story it tells and for its objective consideration of the effects of almost overwhelming social problems. At heart a thriller, it's also a compassionate report from America's heartland, populated by realistic characters who run a gamut of emotions, characters who are by turns sad, courageous, funny, pathetic and monstrous. Propelled by Massie's precise and insightful prose, ear for dialogue, knack for telling detail, and penchant for risk taking, the narrative will overwhelm you if you let it, so powerful is the story at its center. At times one might conclude that the author is telling us that "Life is hard, then you die." Indeed, Massie suggests that to be a woman in America is to endure special burdens. Yet she also suggests that in the bleakness there is hope, as long as we continue to reach out to one another.

Become enmeshed

Kate McDolen is a grade school teacher in the town of Pippins, Virginia. One fateful day she finally gets fed up with the worst kid in the school and crosses the line in dealing with him.