The Sabbathday River
By: Jean Hanff Korelitz.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 499
Subjects: City and town life -- Fiction.; Single mothers -- Fiction.; Women lawyers -- Fiction.; Nervous system -- Degeneration -- Fiction.; Infanticide -- Fiction.; New Hampshire -- Fiction.
Genres: Fiction.
Other titles: Sabbath Day River
Description: Jogging outside the town of Goddard, New Hampshire, Naomi Roth finds the body of a newborn baby girl floating facedown in the Sabbathday River. News of the dead child spreads quickly through Goddard, and Naomi - an aging idealist, a former VISTA volunteer, and the founder of a women's quilting cooperative - is shocked when the community swiftly, implausibly fingers Heather Pratt, a young single mother notorious for her affair with a married man, as the prime suspect.

It comes as an even greater shock when, after a long interrogation behind closed doors, Heather confesses to the crime.

Moved and angered by Heather's plight - and increasingly isolated in conservative Goddard - Naomi engages the help of Judith Friedman, a lawyer and fellow "flatlander," to defend the young woman. But when the truth at the heart of this astonishing case - and the body of a second baby - comes to light, it is Naomi who must confront how little she has understood her town, her friend, and herself.