Noel Pedersen

Smell the Roses - a Novel Noel Pedersen

When suicide is your final hope, what do you do when they take the privilege away? Locked inside a modified prison cell for 23 hours and fifty minutes of every day, Christian Walker, imprisoned as a fourteen year old child, ponders his next move. With a camera watching him, and the guards on the highest of alert, his world appears hopeless. The only respect shown to him comes in the form of a senior guard, but failure to respect himself is the greatest danger. Prisoners come and go around him, and he sees it happen to them the same way it happened to him. But when suicide is your final hope, what do you do when they take the privilege away? Smell the Roses is the debut novel from young writer, Noel Pedersen. It was written following extensive interviews and research of the United States legal and prison systems and is a fictitious novel based on real life occurrences. Astonishing revelations were behind Pedersen's ambitions to heighten the awareness of people worldwide as to how such ludicrous decisions and sentences are played out on children day in, day out. Pedersen is quoted as saying: "Just because you don't see bad things doesn't mean they're not happening." Smell the Roses is testament to this statement and is highlighted in the harshness, brutality and unpredictability of a life that the majority of human existence will never be required to consider or comprehend.