Subtitled 'Love and Life on the Lam', this offhand feminist
tale presents Mazie Maguire from inside a Wisconsin prison,
where she is sent poisoned cookies from her mother-in-law;
jailed for shooting her husband because he was about to
leave her for another woman. She's a hero to the other
inmates, staring thirty in the face, using margarine for
moisturiser. She dreams of escape.
A tornado strikes the area while Mazie is in the garden on
tomato-picking detail. She takes advantage of the ensuing
chaos to leave. Peppered with amusing escape tips, such as
be prepared (she wasn't) and have your back story ready (she
made one up as she went along), THE ESCAPE DIARIES follows
the resourceful farm girl as she gets a lift in just her
underclothes, hears her mother yell support on a TV, and
steals a car among other activities. Homage is paid to
films 'The Fugitive', 'North by Northwest' and others.
Mazie is befriended by a TV cameraman who believes her when
she says she didn't kill her husband. Could she possibly
use her time of freedom, however brief, to discover who
really did?
A deranged mother in law and an incriminating video later,
Mazie has acquired a small dog and learnt that her late
husband had been spending money he didn't have just prior
to his death. She's also made some very iffy friends of
tough kids and cross-dressers, and found out the hard way
that someone would far rather she didn't learn the truth.
This lively tale of thinking on your feet and scrambling
for any escape route, even a slurry pit, will amuse and
entertain, but contains several hard truths. I especially
enjoyed seeing the pampered pet Muffin adapt to being a
street dog once he has found someone deserving of his
loyalty. Read THE ESCAPE DIARIES and let Juliet Rosetti
encourage you to wonder what you would do if your entire
world turned upside down and you looked like spending your
life behind bars. I particularly liked escape tip No. 31;
look like a lady, fight like a fiend.
Wrongly convicted of killing her philandering husband,
Mazie Maguire is three years into her life sentence when
fate intervenes—in the form of a tornado. Just like that,
she’s on the other side of the fence, running through
swamps and cornfields, big box stores and suburban
subdivisions. Hoping to find out who really murdered her
husband, Mazie must stay a few steps ahead of both the law
and her mother-in-law, who would like nothing better than
to personally administer Mazie the death penalty via lethal
snickerdoodle. With the Feds in hot pursuit and the
national media hyping her story, Mazie stumbles upon a vast
political conspiracy and a man who might just be worth a
conjugal visit—if she survives.