Maria Lynn Barrs lived a hard, difficult life before she earned a high school equivalence diploma and a college degree to become first a television reporter, then a news director. She conveys these strengths in her debut novel with The Wild Rose Press, Parallel Secrets. Vicky Robeson, a former television reporter, survives a tragic childhood and uses her reporter’s gifts for interviewing and fact finding to solve the mystery of a missing child in a small Missouri town.

With probing questions and sharp intuition, Vicky ties together another story of female trafficking 9 years before. After threats to her life by a car bomb, a failed hit and run on the highway and numerous murderous gunshot efforts, Vicky uncovers a complicated network of evil. Vicky manages to show developing friendships and community strengths despite guarded multi-generation secrets and enmities. I recommend this rip-roaring mystery about child trafficking. Congratulations ML Barrs.