Freedom Creek

This is the story of Robin, the middle boy of a rambunctious family of eleven children, and rough-hewn country folks. The farm country where Robin lives is traversed by a small river the ten-year-old calls Freedom Creek. Minnows, too numerous to count, seem happy to live in this creek; they swim in one area of the flowing stream for a while, then, when they have stayed there long enough, they swim somewhere else. However, each Fall, they are forced to move away when the creek runs dry....
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This is the story of Robin, the middle boy of a rambunctious family of eleven children, and rough-hewn country folks. The farm country where Robin lives is traversed by a small river the ten-year-old calls Freedom Creek. Minnows, too numerous to count, seem happy to live in this creek; they swim in one area of the flowing stream for a while, then, when they have stayed there long enough, they swim somewhere else. However, each Fall, they are forced to move away when the creek runs dry. Somehow, the minnows survive, and reappear in early Spring when the snow melts and the creek fills up again. But where do the minnows go? When the ten-year-old boy goes on a quest to find the answer, this complex question leads him to an unexpected self-discovery.Like the minnows, Robin gets along fairly well with everybody while remaining true to himself; but some times, being around a lot of people is draining, so he escapes to the creek to spend time watching the minnows. With the favorable environmental influences of Freedom Creek the ten-year-old and the minnows share the same existential nature of being. Robin's world could have remained a pastoral paradise; it did not. The boy is a child, imperfect and rowdy; worse yet, the boy's life is controlled by grown-ups, also imperfect and rowdy. As humanity continues to be in conflict with the world, humanity is again forced out of paradise. Robin, like a minnow of Freedom Creek, will be forced to move away; but he will reappear stronger than ever.Final note: This is a work of literature intended mainly for its entertainment value, and no historical inference must be derived from the text. That said, all the events depicted in this book really occurred; the hero is drawn from life. Remembrances of childhood, of special people met along the way, and meditations on our great pioneering ancestors and native Americans helped to organize the narrative. Robin's thoughts and philosophical interpretations of life are devised from years of searching the truth; moreover, the title of the book, Freedom Creek, is meant to emphasize the spirit of existentialism in the boy's nature.ALERT: Though the main character of this story is a ten-year-old boy, this is not a story for young children; it contains cursing, and dysfunctional parenting behavior.