GREAT WITH CHILD

A busy lawyer on the partner track finds her life suddenly more difficult to control.

Undeterred by an unplanned pregnancy, Abigail Thomas is still trying to do it all. She's seen what motherhood has done to other promising lawyers, and she refuses to become a statistic. So rather than resting and nesting for her new baby, Abigail is still running around Manhattan, spending hours hunched over volumes in the law library, and hopping on long and shaky flights for her next case. It’s during one of these work sessions that she finds herself quite literally in a rut, having tripped over a pothole on a busy street. Luckily, the handsome Timothy Vail happens to be passing by and is eager to serve as a good Samaritan. What should have merely been a chance encounter with a quick goodbye lasts much longer since Tim refuses to let her go on with her day. He is quickly enamored, much to Abigail’s confusion given her current circumstances. With the baby’s father out of the picture, Abigail tries to give it a go with her overzealous suitor, but her heart isn’t totally in it. When Abigail is asked to work on a case that will take her to Grenada in the West Indies, she jumps at the opportunity to prove that her pregnancy will not deter her from her career. There she meets Evelyn MacAdam, an odd older woman whose property and health have been badly damaged by Abigail’s client. Even though it’s Abigail’s duty to her firm to work against Mrs. MacAdam, she finds that her role as a lawyer isn’t as clear as it once seemed. Taitz demonstrates the hurdles of being a working mother, as well as the rampant sexism for a female lawyer on the partner track, in vivid and cringeworthy detail.

The concept of family is expansive in Taitz’s (Down Under, 2012, etc.) latest novel.