Flight

Do you ever feel like you were meant to fly?This is the question plaguing Maddie Johnson, a teenage vagrant living in the streets of America's premier city, as she struggles with and is losing her fight against heroin addiction and grief, with notions of suicide constantly plaguing her thoughts.In New Hope Teen Shelter there is an army of dedicated staff willing to risk their life's work to help Maddie overcome her nightmarish addiction and get her off the streets and into a recovery program. As America's heroin epidemic rages, Maddie finds herself deep within its fires trapped by a blistering past that leaves her stumbling through the ashes of her misconceptions; making her weary of the people of the world, pushing away anyone who says they care, while at the same time struggling to cope with her own humanity, and the horrors she learns are afflicted on the unwanted children of society.In Book One of the tragically hopeful Flight Series Maddie finds herself teetering on the edge of life and death grappling with her beliefs about destiny and what it means to truly soar. When in a moment of surprise, she is interrupted from fulfilling destiny's plan by Ben's arrival – a thirteen-year-old boy who she vaguely recognizes from her brief stays at New Hope Teen Shelter. Though wishing not to have anything to do with such inconveniences Maddie grudgingly comes to understand that Ben is uniquely gifted, and he may possibly hold the answers on freeing her from her own obsessions. As an odd friendship blossoms between the two so does the memories of a tragic past and her willingness to fight against them all.Can Ben with his youthful imagination and instances of innocence aid in saving her? Or will Maddie succumb to the painful memories of a forgotten childhood and the choices she had been forced to make as a teenage girl living in the streets of an unfamiliar city to ease herself from the grasp of heroin sickness and be lost to the darkness of her addiction forever?Flight is a tragically hopeful tale about the silence that tears into the human spirit of loss, innocence, hope, self-realization, and the power of forgiveness colored throughout with moving poetry, deep music, and meaningful quotes that tag the city's dim corridors and broken walls. A must read for anyone struggling with addiction, depression, anxiety, the problems plaguing everyday life, and seeking to find an instance of redemption amongst the chaos.Author's note: As a currently incarcerated person who has suffered through the silence of addiction and homelessness, I feel it is my responsibility to give a voice to this uniquely American story. Not only for those who have managed to survive this epidemic but also for the families living within the stillness, and most important of all, the voices who will never be heard from again. Please join me on this meaningful journey because I believe it is essential that we all one day get to experience flight.