Book One – Escape of the Innocent
The road Nina peddles is narrow and uneven, filled with roots and tree limbs twisting overhead with skeletal fingers. Without warning, her front tire skids and throws her off the bicycle. Screaming, she cups herself into a ball to protect the little boy who’s hiding beneath her coat, and the two of them roll across the dirt.
Lying on her back, she pants for several seconds, then sits up, her stiff fingers fidgeting with the coat buttons. When they’re finally undone, she parts the blanket and puts her hands on either side of his ice cold face. “Are you alive, David?”
He sniffs, then opens his eyes and gazes at her. His lower lip sticks out and tears quiver on his lashes.
She groans with relief.
Nina Ionescu Scott, a nurse in communist Romania is married to an American Bible smuggler, Peter Scott. She can’t help but rescue children out of the orphanage where she works, despite the danger, but it isn’t until she’s asleep in bed that the children’s suffering faces haunt her dreams.
She wakes to find herself in her husband’s arms, whispering soothing words into her ear. He holds me at night and kisses away my fear. He takes away the horror I face every day in that wretched place.
The rest of the story…
Ginni Kennedy’s Escape of the Innocent is a political, psychological suspense novel that depicts President Nicolae Ceaușescu’s ruthless treatment of the Romanian people in the late 1980s. It’s especially difficult for the helpless children who are abandoned to government institutions by parents who are too poor to care for them.
One brave young woman, a nurse who works in one of the worst State Homes for Irrecuperable Children, decides to smuggle out a little girl who’s dying of pneumonia. Then she takes one more out, and then another, until she’s rescued thirteen children.
Every time she does this, she jeopardizes herself and her American husband. If they’re caught, they’ll go to prison and be tortured, and may not survive. The same is true for the friends in their underground church who welcomed these refugee children into their homes. Not only that, but the nurse’s young sister and brothers will end up at the harrowing place where she works.
Every day she looks over her shoulder to see if the Securitate are following her, afraid that this could be her family’s last day of freedom.
Lost and Found
Jesus told a crowd: “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won't she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, 'Rejoice with me because I...
The Old Behemoth
In the early days of my singlehood, our refrigerator often leaked across the hardwood floor. According to several technicians, it was irreparable, so I moved it into the garage, letting its streams flow freely across concrete. At that time, I was teaching English at a...
Christmas Miracle
Ginni Kennedy This flash fiction appeared in Splickety's Lightning Blog on December 7, 2015. The year I told my deceitful husband to leave, my oldest, Nathan, was at that tender age, right before manhood. One day, as I drove him and the others home from school, I...