The motherhood affidavits
Subtitle: a memoir
By: Laura Jean Baker
Published: 2018
Language: eng
Number of pages: 276
ISBN-13: 9781615194391
Subjects: Motherhood; Mothers; Biography; Anecdotes
Description: "With the birth of her first child, soon-to-be professor Laura Jean Baker finds herself electrified by oxytocin, the "love hormone"--the first effective antidote to her lifelong depression. Over the next eight years, her "oxy" cravings, and her family, only grow--to the dismay of her husband, Ryan, a freelance public defender. As her reckless baby-making threatens her family's middle-class existence, Baker identifies more and more with Ryan's legal clients, often drug-addled fellow citizens of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Is she any less desperate for her next fix? Baker is in an impossible bind: The same drive that sustains her endangers her family; the cure is also the disease. She explores this all-too-human paradox by threading her story through those of her local counterparts who've run afoul of the law--like Rob McNally, the lovable junkie who keeps resurfacing in Ryan's life. As Baker vividly reports on their alleged crimes--theft, kidnapping, opioid abuse, and even murder--she unerringly conjures tenderness for the accused, yet increasingly questions her own innocence. Baker's ruthless self-interrogation makes this her personal affidavit--her sworn statement, made for public record if not a court of law. With a wrenching ending that compels us to ask whether Baker has fallen from maternal grace, this is an extraordinary addition to the literature of motherhood."--Jacket flap.
Table of contents: title: The Walmart heist; title: Brown-sugar skies; title: The bandwagon for animals; title: Bedside manner; title: Hell's lovers; title: Stargazers; title: On the lam; title: Sawdust days; title: Ultrasonic; title: Boiling over; title: Criminal procedure.