John K. Reed is a son of the Southeast. With a life shaped by varied experiences in the America landscape—big city to rural landscape—he has spent years observing the shift between the world as it is and the world we are told to perceive. Maya Queen is the latest outgrowth of these observations. It is a narrative exploration of duty, legacy, and the quiet courage required to hold the line. It is also an attempt to explore the prisons that cage us and the undying hope for freedom. Though fiction, the Maya Queen series is a call for each of us to see and engage reality, and to find our freedom.