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 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

Schelly has made the subjective harmony and cacophony of mental illness understandable. The story shows how surrender to trust and acceptance can achieve redemption even in the worst of circumstances.

- Sandy Goble, RN, MSN, NAMI member (National Association of the Mentally Ill)

A compelling story about the transformative power of love and friendship. Two men meet in adulthood who respectively suffer the effects of childhood sexual abuse and mental illness. Through a series of shattering events, which almost destroys one and forces the other to discover his own capacity to love and nurture, both are saved.

- Margret Michaelson, BSN, PHN

Chance Place opens a door into a world far removed from most of us, or is it? As the main characters become real, we see ourselves separated only by degrees or by chance. We are indebted to the author for her keen insight into a system ostensibly designed to help the mentally ill, but more effectively designed to ease our collective guilt as we continue to avoid the high cost of effective care.

- Rev. Richard Stennett

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, book reviewer
THE SMALL PRESS 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.

- Cynthia Parkhill, Reviewer, The Record-Bee, Lakeport, CA

Not a book for the prissy reader. 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. Unwilling to admit the reality to fairy tales, we close off the shadowland of society with the arrogance that such things could not possibly happen to us. Life, like a steak, is better digested when it's cooked and cut to a pleasing tenderness that falls apart at every bite: but what she delivers is something more hard, more cold, like white lightning on ice.

- Pogo, Reviewer
The Compulsivereader