A story in the tradition of A Beautiful Mind, Chance Place was a finalist for the International Ernest Hemingway First Novel Award. Judges said: “A sensitively told story. For the literary reader this is a real find.” It was also a finalist for the James Fellowship Novel in Progress Award and North Carolina Banks Channel Books Publisher’s Award.
In 1990 Frenchy Bibideaux, a recovering alcoholic with a quirky sense of humor, finds himself wrongfully placed in a halfway house for the mentally ill in Minneapolis, MN. There, he befriends New Age bent Nathan Waite, a sensitive schizophrenic, whose family has all but fallen apart from the emotional and financial drain of his illness. While nun social workers hold the men to absurd rules, their fragile friendship goes well until Frenchy seriously offends Nathan. Nathan refuses forgiveness and disappears. Feeling responsible, Frenchy must soon choose between rescuing Nathan and his own future. Stakes are high; there will be no second chance, only this one chance to save them both. What will he do?
... Powerful, haunting, terrifying … a story of friendship and loyalty you won’t soon forget. This sensitive and poignant look into the little understood world of the mentally ill is an awesome work.
—Jill Jones, author of acclaimed psychological thriller Every Move You Make
... Chance Place takes the reader into a surreal world vivid with authentic detail. Complex, fully drawn characters linger long after reading. A tour de force.
—Jane A. Stearns, DSW, ACSW
REVIEWS
…. Schelly, with a taste for the piquant, spices the story with the bitterness of life, savoring the salty morsels and peppering it with sex. She tantalizes us with an opening that draws us further into the darker regions of society and into the labyrinthine catacombs of our locked minds….what she delivers is something like white lightning on ice….
—Pogo, THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
CHANCE PLACE is an honest portrayal of life under difficult, at times even terrifying, conditions that are not always understood by society at large. The name CHANCE PLACE is a key theme….Nathan and Frenchy have built up an arsenal of defenses to act as buffers against the world’s “slings and arrows,” defenses that limit them from experiencing life fully. Each has one last chance at survival - and the key is the friendship they can forge between them.… Schelly says that CHANCE PLACE, written alternately with AT THE CROSSROADS (2001), a process that took 16 years…the long gestation was definitely worth it.
—Cynthia Parkhill, Lake County Record-Bee, Lakeport, CA
Anyone who reads CHANCE PLACE will be changed in a positive way by its content and that in itself is a success for the field of mental health care. This book would work well in undergraduate, and particularly graduate level social work and clinical psychology curriculums and for the staff of specific treatment facilities across the country who are actually caring for people with mental illness.”
—J. Stephen McDaniel, M. D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA.
….CHANCE PLACE reminds one of the sorrowful yet likable and heartwarming characters of Ken Kesey’s classic ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST. As in her previous novel AT THE CROSSROADS, Frankie Schelly examines the multifaceted and often conflicting facets and pressures of modern society while keeping her eye on the toll these take on individuals who are exposed and vulnerable.
—Henry Berry, THE SMALL PRESS BOOK REVIEW
