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Inner Trappings Review
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Three friends, one loaded truck, and a mad grizzly bear for an ex husband. And that is just the opening paragraph!!! The opening is completed with a broken bottle, a bar fight, and at last, escape. Barbara Williamson-Wood paints a verbal picture of life that is all too real. After the divorce he just will not let go. How often do we see that as a headline?

 

As Monica travels away from this hell on earth, she encounters a spot of heaven with all the coffee you can drink. The characters she creates are pulled from the headlines and your next-door neighbors. She draws a picture of a motel, two pump filling station and café as if a country song needs to be written. Roll down your virtual window, put in your cyber gas and you can smell the aroma of fresh coffee and hot apple pie.

 

The question that comes up is, does Monica really want to stay here or head off to the wilds of the mountains? How far can she run? How many have to die for her to be truly free? Each page is filled with action. Answer these questions and more in the pages of this delightful book.

 Inner Trappings
Barbara Williamson-Wood
Page Free Publishing, 2006
 
 
 
 
Monica Payton wants her own life back.
 
After enduring years of abuse from her husband Charlie, she divorces him and leaves town, everything she owns packed into her car. With a broken spirit, she drives not knowing where she is going. All Monica knows is that she must be free of Charlie if she is to truly live and have her own life.
 
She finds herself in the small picturesque town of Pine Lake. There, she meets local police officer Ben Johnson. She immediately feels an attraction to the handsome gentleman and finds herself thinking of what it would be like to love and be loved in return. Their attraction blooms and it’s clear that what is between them is more than an attraction.
 
Monica wrestles with what she should tell Ben; how much of her past should she reveal? Ben knows that Monica ran from something horrible, a secret that she keeps inside herself. He wonders if she will ever trust him enough to tell him everything.
 
But someone is about to destroy their new  found love. As a child, Charlie Payton watched his father kill his mother. That act shaped what Charlie was to become: an animal bent on getting whatever he wanted, by any means necessary. 
 
Charlie wants Monica for his own and nothing will stand in his way.  He will do whatever is necessary to find her and make her see that she belongs to him. Even if it means murder.
 
Monica will have to learn to trust Ben with all her heart and, more importantly, trust herself, if she has any hope of surviving. Otherwise, Charlie will find her. And when he does, he will kill her….
 
Inner Trappings is a total page turner. From the first page, you’re drawn into Monica’s world, into her struggle for survival. Into her sheer will to live. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started Inner Trappings but I was finished in two days and left wanting more.
 
Monica is an incredibly well defined character. You feel for her right away and you ache for her as you read about her struggle to trust and to love again. Ben is loveable as the hero and the romance that blooms between them is better than anything Nora Roberts could ever write.
 
The book just feels so real, so true. It’s as if Williamson-Wood has placed herself in Monica’s body to tell her story. There is such truth in her words, such beauty that you can’t help but keep reading late into the night.
 
This is more than a simple tale of a battered and abused wife. Inner Trappings is about the healing power of love, about survival, about redemption. Ultimately, Inner Trappings is about forgiveness and trying to find a place for yourself in the world.
 
I loved every blessed word and my only complaint is that I wish the book were longer. Monica’s journey ended too soon for me and I can only hope that Williamson-Wood is writing another novel starring Monica Payton.
 
Amazing characters like Monica rarely make appearances in literature anymore. So all I can say to you is this: read Inner Trappings. You will flat out love it.
 
 
Jamieson Wolf