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The Bottom Line - Denise keeps having these nightmares that she is falling, after losing many nights of sleep she goes to see a Doctor that puts her under hypnosis.
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Guide Review - Free Falling by Sherri Neilson
What she finds out is that she has lived a previous life as Olivia Walters, the wife of a powerful cotton farmer in South Carolina named Byron. Denise is single and dating a guy named Aaron, that is when all of the nightmares of her falling started. When she goes under hypnosis she realizes that Byron and Aaron or one and the same. Byron has a really bad temper and mistreats his slaves dreadfully. Olivia is not use to this, her uncle that raised her always treated their slaves as family and they were treated fairly and no one was ever whipped. This was not the case on Byron's plantation, Chesterfield. The overseer along with Byron took the whip to the slaves for every little offense that they deemed necessary, which was very often.
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Reviewed by Hope Richardson
Denise keeps having these nightmares that she is falling, after losing many nights of sleep she goes to see a Doctor that puts her under hypnosis. What she finds out is that she has lived a previous life as Olivia Walters, the wife of a powerful cotton farmer in South Carolina named Byron.
Denise is single and dating a guy named Aaron, that is when all of the nightmares of her falling started. When she goes under hypnosis she realizes that Byron and Aaron or one and the same. Byron has a really bad temper and mistreats his slaves dreadfully. Olivia is not use to this, her uncle that raised her always treated their slaves as family and they were treated fairly and no one was ever whipped. This was not the case on Byron's plantation, Chesterfield. The overseer along with Byron took the whip to the slaves for every little offense that they deemed necessary, which was very often.
Denise wanting to find out what happens to Olivia agrees to go under often and to start transcribing the tapes that the doctor records during each session.
Olivia is so lonely that she becomes friends with Wilson her black carriage driver. She finds that she really enjoys his company so she makes and takes every opportunity to spend time with him. Wilson wants to run away to the north but Olivia can't let him go, what would she do? Olivia finds that the more time that she spends with Wilson the more she despises her husband and falls in love with Wilson. Something that is unheard of in this day and time. After long consideration Olivia cannot take the abuse from her husband any longer and agrees to run away with Wilson up north. She has fake papers drawn up so that if patrollers looking stop them for run away slaves they will be safe, or so she thought.
Denise is starting to see Aaron in a whole different light and she tries to get rid of him because she knows that the abuse will only get worse. She finally puts a restraining order against him after telling him that she did not care to see him anymore and he starts trying to break down her door. This is after he has gotten himself fired from his construction job after hitting a black man and throwing him off a second story building breaking his arm.
Olivia and Wilson are caught and put in jail and when Byron comes to get her, he leaves her handcuffed, and the whole way back to the Chesterfield Plantation she knew what was going to happen to Wilson. He would be whipped. Sure enough when they get back he is whipped and then they come and get Olivia to come out and see to him, she was horrified to see him hanging from a tree. Byron had whipped him and then had him hung to show others what would happen if they also tried to leave.
Olivia realizes that she is going to have a child, but not knowing whom the father is she is afraid to tell Byron, afraid of what he will do. He finds out and of course he insist that it is his but when the baby is born it is Wilson's' son. He has it taken away and tells her that her baby was still born and that is what everyone must be told, to save his reputation along with hers.
A couple of weeks later she and Byron are on the staircase and he pushes her over the banister but before she hits the floor the doctor brings her out from under. Now she knows what happened to Olivia. Maybe the dreams will stop.
Aaron calls her from jail to go to his office to pick up his paycheck. Against her better judgment she agrees. When she gets there she sees a big black man from the back and he looked familiar to her for some unknown reason she thinks that she knows him. Could it be Wilson? Could it be her destiny?