Emma Gets Payback

Daughters #2

by James W. Nelson

Emma, 18 (originally appeared in Daughters, Book 1, The Heartbreak of Human Trafficking.) Six months have gone by. She and her new best friend, Alexis, leave the safety of Abundance, Montana, and the home of her foster father, Bailey Forbes, to head 200 miles back out into the cold world. But the University of Montana, Wyman, should be safe. After all, it's a university, with security guards and campus police, and professors, and many other adults to look after the new students.
All the other young girls rescued have been living in Bailey's house plus Bailey's employer, Lance's house, while they get their lives back in order. By the end of the six months most of the girls have either returned to their parents, or have a job at Abundance, and have rented a house with the option to buy.
Bailey and Heather (now recovered from her bullet wound) are planning their wedding. Everybody is happy and moving forward with their lives.
Unfortunately, Emma's past comes back to haunt her right there on the college campus. Alexis tells her she should call Bailey, but Emma determines to take care of things herself.

177 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 18, 2013

About the author

James W. Nelson was born in a little farmhouse on the prairie in eastern North Dakota in 1944. Some doctors made house calls back then. He remembers kerosene lamps, bathing in a large galvanized tub, and their phone number was a long ring followed by four short ones, and everybody else in the neighborhood could rubberneck. (Imagine that today!)

James has been telling stories most of his life. Some of his first memories happened during recess in a one-room country schoolhouse near Walcott, ND. His little friends, eyes wide, would gather round and listen to his every hastily-imagined word. It was a beginning. Fascinated by the world beginning to open, he remembers listening to the teacher read to all twelve kids in the eight grades.

He was living in that same house on the land originally homesteaded by his great grandfather, when a savage tornado hit in 1955 and destroyed everything. They rebuilt and his family remained until the early nineteen-seventies when diversified farming began changing to industrial agribusiness (not necessarily a "good" thing.) He spent four years in the US Navy, worked many jobs and finally has settled on a few acres exactly two and one half miles straight west of the original farmstead, ironically likely the very spot where the 1955 tornado first struck, which sometimes gives him a spooky feeling.

Reviews

[Meghan Malicoat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I won a copy of this book through the Goodreads contest. It was the second book in a series and even though I had never read the first it was still easy to pick up on. This was a very easy read that I finished in less that a day. Overall I enjoyed reading the book. I did think the language between the girls was a little unrealistic as I've never heard friends speak to each other so properly. I also didn't understand how a girl so quick to come to the rescue of another girl she barely knew could allow her self to wind up in the situation she did, especially after just having escaped a similar situation. However, if she had just told Rodney to go to hell from the start, I guess that wouldn't have made for much of a book. I actually wish in retrospect that I had read the first book before starting this one then I might have had more insight into Emma and her reasons for letting herself be taken advantage of.