Marcia, a young woman nearing twenty, is on her way to jail. She has been busted, again, this time for using heroin. As she passes buildings and bus stops that remind her of her childhood, she tries to recall what incidents led her to her dilemma. With barely a goodbye, her mother leaves her at the steps of the jail. Terrified, she is processed and placed in a new world—cell 6, bed 8.
Unexpected Angels is a true account of a young woman, once an academic superstar, who is thrown into jail to await trial on a narcotics charge. At nineteen, she's already a three time loser. She must dig deep inside herself and find her power or lose it, possibly forever. Aided by the bonds she makes with the women inmates, and in particular, through her extraordinary friendship with a feisty, street-smart black woman, she finally finds her true strength and learns how to fight for her life.
While reliving Marcia's amazing experience, you will meet the women who made a difference in her life, her unexpected angels.
Carmela ran guns for her father, his method of putting food on the family table. Raped by the snitch who turned her in, she still dreamed her prince charming would come to take her away.
Olivia, an illiterate, single mother of seven, is serving one year for welfare fraud. She needed money to buy her son clothes to wear to school. So she took a nighttime janitorial job and failed to report the income. She was sentenced to a year in jail. Now the government is threatening to put six of her children in foster care.
You'll also meet Deely, a chatty 19-year old whose boyfriend, after ripping apart the purse of an old woman and finding no money, threw the woman in the trunk of his car. She suffocated. Deely was charged as an accomplice to murder.
And how could anyone forget Vicki, the cellblock queen? In detention and jail most of her 23 years, she mastered the art of doing time. Fighting when she has to, conning when she can, Vicki reigns supreme. A girl doesn't dare make Vicki mad. Except for Marcia. Once enemies, they became friends who would change each others lives forever
Each woman wears the label “criminal.” To Marcia, they were angels whose stories deserve to be told.
Although the story is about Marcia, the reader can be any woman, or man, who could also use an angel in their life to find their way. It's a story about loss and rediscovery, about climbing out of the depth of despair to seeing the glorious light of possibility. Read it if you need some hope in your life, too.
