Millie Reynolds grows up in Depression-era Mississippi with an abusive, alcoholic father and a mother who has given up fighting back. Her father is white, her mother was disowned by her well-off family for marrying a Choctaw man, and Millie is caught between worlds that want nothing to do with each other. Julie Cantrell introduced her in Into the Free (2012), which hit the New York Times bestseller list and won the Christy Award for both Debut Novel and Book of the Year.
Each spring, Millie watches a band of Romani Travelers pass through town. One year she befriends a young man among them named River, and the friendship leads her to secrets her family has buried for generations. Into the Free is about a child looking for any way out of a cycle of violence.
When Mountains Move (2013) picks up with Millie at seventeen. She has married Bump Anderson, a rodeo veterinarian, and they have moved to the Colorado Rockies to start a ranch. Her Choctaw grandmother Oka joins them. But the damage from Mississippi is not something Millie can leave behind by changing states, and the sequel follows her as she tries to build a life while carrying the weight of what she survived.
Reading Order
See the complete Into the Free reading order for all books in the series.