WISHFUL THINKING

Wicoff's first novel is a quirky time-traveling adventure mixed with a treatise on the plight of the working mother. 

Jennifer Sharpe's story is a familiar one: A divorced mother of two, she struggles to make ends meet, sleeping on the sofa bed in her tiny apartment while the boys' father pursues his acting "career." She has a rewarding job with the New York City Housing Authority, though her newly hired boss expects private sector hours without the commensurate pay. Her babysitter spends more time with the boys than she does, and her future hinges on even more hours at work. If only she could be in two places at once. And voilà, she can. She loses her cellphone, and when she finds it outside her door the next day, a new app has appeared: Wishful Thinking, An App for Women Who Need to Be in More Than One Place at the Same Time, courtesy of her mysterious next-door neighbor, physicist-cum–fairy-godmother Dr. Diane Sexton. Though there's some talk about wormholes and quantum foam, this is no sci-fi novel, and the mechanics of time travel (and the problematic paradoxes) are left aside to focus on every working mother's dream come true, killing it at work while baking cookies for the school fundraiser. Jennifer even finds time for a love life, dating her older son's dreamy guitar teacher. But of course these Faustian bargains have unforeseen consequences. Jennifer is living three lives in 24 hours (aging her rapidly), traveling back and forth in time to be with the kids after school, stay at work until 8:00 and go on dates with her new beau. Time is beginning to bleed together, and her partner at work (also a mom, but without the handy app) is falling apart trying to keep up. But can Jennifer ever live happily without the app?  

First-time novelist Wicoff has a comic touch with this amiable fantasy.