Colleen Keke Black

The Stolen Shoes Colleen Keke Black

Living in the middle of the oilfields in South Texas five miles from town, ten-year-old Jeannie hated her new home. She hated her daddy's new job as an oil and gas engineer that had brought them here. She hated the huisache and guajillo brush that grew everywhere, each covered with wicked thorns. Most of all, she hated her new stepmother and the fact that she was pregnant. This, coupled with the belief that she was responsible for her mother's untimely death, was almost too much.

When she and her older brother decide to go exploring, she looked at her new school shoes, and even though her stepmother had told her not to wear them but save them for school, she put them on. When Jeannie and her brother find a creek with knee-deep water, they decide to go wading. Taking their shoes off, they leave them on the creek bank. When they came out, Dexter's shoes are still where he left them, but Jeanne's new school shoes are gone.

Stolen Shoes is not only the search for Jeannie's shoes that have mysteriously disappeared, but also the struggle of broken lives to blend and overcome and unite as a loving, happy family once again.