About Set Me Free

"I am the one who is telling this story. So I'll begin with what my illustrious father had to say about stories in the first place. There he'd stand in front of a crowd of white senators, or Hollywood types, or—because he wasn't a total hypocrite—a flock of reservation kids, and he would say, fire in his eyes, 'Only stories, true stories, can heal the crack at the heart of the world.'"

Ponderosa Academy is Elliot Barrow's brainchild. Built with his own hands in the Oregon high desert, the school serves the children of the Neige Courante, a Native American tribe eking out a living on a dusty, overlooked reservation. Elliot's family, colleagues, and friends know nothing of the devastating catastrophe at the heart of his life, the true reason he founded the academy. After he's critically injured in a horrific fire, those left behind have only the balm of narrative, tales gathered by those who know him best. Until they are placed side by side, the secret at the heart of Elliot Barrow's life will never be known.

Narrated by the acerbic Cal, Elliot's closest friend and bitterest rival, Set Me Free is the story of those who love Elliot: Amelia, his sixteen-year-old daughter, who hungers for a life beyond her father's ideas and ideals, never imagining the violent, tragic truth of her dead mother's legacy; Helen, Elliot's first wife, visiting the academy to direct a production of Shakespeare's The Tempest; and Cal himself, brilliant, angry, and afraid. Then there is the matter of Willa Llewelyn, hurtling across the country in her father's ancient Volvo. She has never heard of Ponderosa Academy or Elliot Barrow. But she is vital to the great, beguiling mystery haunting Amelia, Helen, and Cal.

Inspired by The Tempest—whose last words are "set me free"—Beverly-Whittemore's novel reverberates with the ambitions and foibles of liberal ideals, the dangers of protecting children from the sins of their fathers, and the boisterous voices of Neige Courante students. In its frank depiction of fatherhood and friendship, race and class, love and devastation, Set Me Free is moving, funny, incisive, and above all, wise.