Prisoners of Stewartville - The Most Dangerous Town on Earth
I don’t always focus on the titles of books when I read them because I sometimes feel like the title of a book doesn’t do justice to the story that is being told. There are times however, when the title fits the story so incredibly well and gives so much meaning to the story, I can’t not mention it. The Prisoners of Stewartville by Shannon Felton is a great story and makes the best use of a title of a book I’ve read in a long time.
Growing up, I lived a few towns over from a town with a maximum security prison in it. Though the town wasn’t as isolated as the town of Stewartville and it didn’t rely on the prison to keep the town going, it was a presence in the surrounding community. When you drove through that town, you definitely knew that the prison was there and you knew the types of people that were being held behind those walls and fences. So while my experience wasn’t exactly like the one described in Felton’s novel, I can certainly see some parallels between the novel and what might happen in a real life prison town.
The impetus for the story is that the prisons in Stewartville attract two kinds of people to the town. Either you live in Stewartville because you have a family member who is in the prison and you moved to be closer to them. Or you work in the prison, probably as a guard, and you live in Stewartville to be close to where you work. While this isn’t true of the entire town, most of the people fit into these categories.
The idea that everyone in the town is connected in some way to the prison makes sense and it provides for natural conflict between any number of characters. Felton does a great job of working this conflict into the story. Our main character has a father locked up in the prison and his best friend’s mother is a guard there. While there is underlying tension because of the low socioeconomic status of most of the people who live in the town, there is also a dark secret that the town tries to keep hidden.
There are tunnels below the town that have been walled up for some reason that isn’t understood by any of the characters in the story. But when our young friends find an entrance to the tunnels and open it up, something evil is unleashed upon the unsuspecting town. The evil changes the way people live and interact and it makes Stewartville seem like the most dangerous place on earth.
There is mystery and intrigue and plenty of plot twists that keep the reader guessing throughout the entire story. I don’t want to give away the ending but look for the multiple meanings of the title as you make your way through the this. The Prisoners of Stewartville is a quick read and one I would highly recommend.
We received a free copy of this book from Silver Shamrock Publishing in exchange for an honest review.
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