Title: The Sabbathday River
First published: 1999
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.
Subjects: Fiction, Degeneration, Infanticide, Single mothers, Nervous system, Women lawyers, City and town life, New hampshire, fiction, Fiction, legal, Women lawyers, fiction, Fiction, mystery & detective, women sleuths, Single women, fiction
Places: New Hampshire
LC classification: PS3561.O6568 S23 1999