More Beautiful for Having Been Broken

Devoted FBI Agent McKenzie “Max” De Ridder has recently lost her mother, who was her very best friend and greatest champion. In the wake of grief, McKenzie’s behavior has become erratic and she soon finds herself suspended. McKenzie, frenzied, drinking and lost, escapes to the small town she used to visit on “Star Adventures” with her late mother. Soon after McKenzie arrives in town she meets Freddie, a young special needs boy with Fanconi Anemia (a rare disease that comes with a short expiration date). He spends his wheelchair-bound days whizzing around the streets of the small town of Meriville. Freddie’s savant-like wisdom and perseverance penetrate McKenzie’s gruff walls of despair and pain. She is taken by how unaffected he is by the reality of his condition. McKenzie forms an undeniable bond with Freddie and an unexpected testy, then loving relationship with his mother. The small town tangled relationships and mother-daughter dynamics reveal themselves, as each woman traverses the intricate minefields of love, pain and anguish. In the end, the extraordinary young “teacher” Freddie exhibits strength and courage, creating the unconditional love each needs to begin their journeys to becoming whole and finding love.