In seventeenth-century Dublin, Ireland, pre-teen Callum McCarthy is shipped to the English Colonies where he will endure horrors of the Irish slave trade. Intense and powerful, JR Thompson's Brutalized explores ideas of greed, loneliness and despair, determination, and faith. Growing up in an area where poor Irish families are as welcome as malaria, Callum, the son of a drunkard father and neglectful mother, already has the odds stacked against him. But when the boy is kidnapped from his own home, he's plunged into a living nightmare. Upon arrival in America, a cruel man by the name of Josiah Gillcrest makes Callum his ill-treated workhorse. Bone-chilling secrets Callum uncovers on the tobacco plantation force him to make difficult decisions. Should he make a run for it? Kill the wicked overseer, who happens to be his master's son? Lead a slave uprising? The possibilities are endless. Mystery, brutality, and deep, dirty secrets saturate Brutalized as Thompson shares truths of white slavery from Ireland and Germany to Colonial America. Callum's detective skills could prove useful in bringing crucial changes to the plantation if they don't kill him first.