DEEP IN THE HEART

In her perfectly pitched debut novel, Warner (Learning to Dance and Other Stories, not reviewed) warms the heart and

provokes the mind as she examines the lives of two women whose paths intersect when one seeks an abortion at a clinic picketed by pro-lifers. Set in Austin, Texas, the story begins when Hannah Solace, a high-school assistant principal pushing 40, discovers she's pregnant. Husband Carl, an artist and bookstore manager, is delighted, but Hannah is not. She has too many painful memories of caring for her younger sister, Helen, after their mother’s accidental death. Warner sensitively treats the issue of abortion as a complicated one in which people’s decisions are powerfully affected by their past experiences, temperament, and relationships. Hannah and Carl are merely two in a cast of wonderfully rendered people trying to live right, but not finding it easy. Across town, 23-year-old Penny Reed, who owns a florist shop and lives in an apartment above Grandmother Mattie's garage, is at a crossroads. Reared by Mattie while her mother Delia drifted from marriage to marriage, Penny doesn’t know who her father is. Courted by charismatic Dr. Bill, the pastor of her evangelical church, she’s not sure she knows what love is either. These four protagonists collide when Hannah decides to have an abortion without telling Carl. She arrives at the clinic in the midst of a protest organized by Dr. Bill, and Carl, once he discovers what’s afoot, finally arrives too—only to become embroiled in the melee. Not all resolutions are happy in this tale of love's unpredictability and life's unfairness, but the characters change, becoming

wiser in the ways of the world and the heart, and that is more than enough.