In the past, Eli and other villagers willingly betrayed a family with a third child in order to obtain food for their own families. They save Luke from being executed by the Population Police when they arrive one man in particular named Eli reveals that the village no longer cares about their own lives and will do anything to help those in need like Luke. When he is chosen to accompany a sergeant on a mission to distribute new identification cards to citizens, Luke unknowingly brings about the catalyst of change when he refuses to shoot a defiant old woman and runs away, leaving his sergeant in the hands of a group of angry villagers who despise the Population Police.Īfter several days of surviving alone, haunted by the memory of his friend Jen Talbot, run-ins with a selfish stable boy who was with Luke and his sergeant at the time of the incident, and attempting to avoid the Population Police at all costs, Luke finds his way to another village filled with starving people. He has been working from within the Population Police at the stables in hopes of slowly overthrowing them and bringing about freedom. Luke Garner is an illegal third child along with Trey, Nina, Matthias, Percy, and Alia. It is the seventh and final book in the Shadow Children series. She has won the International Reading Association Children's Book Award and several state Readers' Choice Awards.Among the Free is a 2006 young adult science fiction novel by American writer Margaret Peterson Haddix, about a time in which drastic measures have been taken to quell overpopulation. She also writes the Shadow Children series and the Missing series. Dunphrey, Just Ella, Turnabout, The Girl with 500 Middle Names, Because of Anya, and Into the Gauntlet.

She has written more than 30 books including Don't You Dare Read This, Mrs. Her first book, Running Out of Time, was published in 1995. Before becoming an author, she was a copy editor for The Journal-Gazette, a newspaper reporter for The Indianapolis News, an instructor at Danville Area Community College, and a freelance writer. She received bachelor's degrees in English/journalism, English/creative writing, and history from Miami University in 1986. Margaret Peterson Haddix was born in Washington Court House, Ohio on April 9, 1964. When thirteen-year-old Luke Garner unwittingly sets off a rebellion which sweeps the country and ousts the Population Police from power, he quickly realizes that the new regime is corrupt and he may hold the only key to true freedom.

Haddix among the free