Counting Backwards A Novel
Counting Backwards A Novel by Jacqueline Friedland, published by Harper Muse on March 11, 2025, is a thought-provoking exploration of women’s rights and societal expectations. This 336-page novel presents two alternating narratives that intertwine the lives of Jessa Gidney, a modern-day lawyer, and Carrie Buck, a young woman embroiled in a pivotal legal battle in 1927. As Jessa navigates her high-powered legal career and personal aspirations, she becomes involved in pro bono work that uncovers troubling issues related to reproductive rights and medical malpractice, drawing parallels to Carrie’s historical struggle against eugenics.
Readers will find a rich tapestry of legal and social themes as the story unfolds across multiple timelines. Jessa’s journey to advocate for women like Isobel Perez, a young mother facing dire circumstances, reveals the ongoing fight for justice and equality. Meanwhile, Carrie Buck’s experiences highlight the historical context of these issues, emphasizing that the path to progress is often fraught with challenges. This edition invites readers to reflect on the connections between past and present, showcasing the resilience required to confront systemic injustices.
Official synopsis Publisher
A ZIBBY OWENS MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025! | SHEREADS PICK OF 2025!
Told in two alternating narratives bound by a shocking parallel of issues such as reproductive rights and society’s expectations of women and mothers, Counting Backwards is a compelling reminder that progress is rarely a straight line and always hard-won. “Erin Brockovich for our times.” (Jill Santopolo, New York Times bestselling author)
New York, 2022. Jessa Gidney is trying to have it all–a high-powered legal career, a meaningful marriage, and hopefully, one day, a child. But when her professional ambitions come up short and Jessa finds herself at a turning point, she leans into her family’s history of activism by taking on pro bono work at a nearby detention center. There she meets Isobel Perez–a young mother fighting to stay with her daughter–but as she gets to know Isobel, an unsettling revelation about Isobel’s health leads Jessa to uncover a horrifying pattern of medical malpractice within the detention facility. One that shockingly has ties to her own family.
Virginia, 1927. Carrie Buck is an ordinary young woman in the center of an extraordinary legal battle at the forefront of the American eugenics conversation. From a poor family, she was only six years old when she first became a ward of the state. Uneducated and without any support, she spends her youth dreaming about a different future–one separate from her exploitative foster family–unknowing of the ripples her small, country life will have on an entire nation.
As Jessa works to assemble a case against the prison and the crimes she believes are being committed there, she discovers the landmark Supreme Court case involving Carrie Buck with shockingly similar implications to the one before her now. Her connection to the case, however, is deeper and much more personal than she ever knew–sending her down new paths that will leave her forever changed and determined to fight for these women, no matter the cost.
“. . . a riveting, compelling story–but it’s also an important one, reminding us that history’s darkest aspects can echo forward into our present day and that there is so much work left to do in the fight for freedom and equality.”–Kelly Rimmer, New York Times bestselling author of The German Wife.
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