Book Review: “Free Men”

I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve heard from enough people and have been in enough book clubs, that I know readers who think a book isn’t as good if there isn’t some kind of an ending that makes you say “oh my god that was crazy wow holy crap what the?!” 😂

Not to say those aren’t awesome books, I myself have read plenty  of them.

But when an ending of such magnitude overshadows the entire storyline and after some huge blowout of a last page you have now forgotten the entire story.. and you have then forgot all the characters.. andddd now you’ve forgotten pretty much everything that has happened because you’re so focused on the ending.

Except that like anything else in life; what good is getting to the end of something, no matter what the outcome, when you don’t care about the journey?

Well, I will tell you one thing. If you’re looking for one of those books to give you a firework filled ending, then this one is really not it.

Stay away and find something else to read, but if you’re interested in a book that’s more of a story about the journey and not the destination, then take this one out of your local library. “Free men” may be for you.

It is one of those books whose characters will stay with you for a long while after you are done with it.

This book reminds me somewhat of “The Homesman” which is a interesting novel that was then turned into a movie with Hollar Swank and Tommy Lee Jones. “The Homesman” follows the story of a group of women in the 1850 pioneer days who have gone completely insane. It travels back into what happened to them before and after that current point, and how they lived their lives before they lost their minds. It was not so much about what happened in the end but the fact that the journey will haunt you longggg after you’ve read it. (And as most of us book worms say “That book is definitely much better than the movie”)

This novel “Free Men” follows the lives of three men in the late 1700’s who were just trying to find their own personal freedom whenthey crossed paths. (Well, technically Four if you incluse the bounty hunter who has his own ghosts chasing him) Whether it’s physically or mentally, the idea of freedon comes in many different forms. Yet in reality how free is anyone, if they aren’t free from themselves? Why run from your choices to find freedom in a physical sense, when you still cant escape the prison of your mind?

The story goes back through the past decisions these men had made, which in turn brings you to how they all arrived on this trail, and what things happened in the that brought 3 strangers to this search for “freedom”. They travel down these trails running from their ghosts, hard childhoods, familes forgotten and decisions that they don’t yet know they will have to make.

Freedom is a word used lightly when you are in a sense trying to find it.

Because if freedom to a person is only running away physically, but not being able to get rid of the guilt that they harbor mentally will never leave them; then how free are you ever really going to be?

That is something that these characters deal with through the entire book, and it’s a pretty good read because it will stay with you for a little while after you’re done with it.