This fictional account exposes the dark underbelly of the custody industry in American villages. Children are treated like footballs and are simply kicked from place to place, parental rights are routinely violated, often with one parent who is considered no more than a paycheck, and the custody enterprise of judges, lawyers, and counselors profit from the displacement and misery of children. The novel punches hard in the gut and does not let up until the untimely and tragic climax.

Paul Theus is a respectable middle-class professor until his peaceful world is shattered as we find out from the first line: No parent prepares for a child to be taken.

Beware of strangers and watch out for the big bad wolf kids are told but what if a family unit is smoldered from within by a mother? Paul found the note that his wife was leaving for awhile tucked in a book about the Jon Bonet Ramsey child murder.

The Bohemian mother Anne Theus inflames the threat posed by the idea that it takes the village court to raise a child.

Do the courts really act in the best interest of the children?

Parents plan for their children’s home, school, clothes, food, and happiness but once the Theus’ five-year daughter is kidnapped we are barraged by conflict for over three years until the terminal end.

Is the terminal ending tragic or the only possible resolution to the conflict? You decide.