ABOUT THE BOOK

On a warm September morning in 1985, not far from the town of Goddard, New Hampshire, Naomi Roth finds the body of a newborn girl floating in the Sabbathday river. The community makes its own accusations. Heather Pratt, a young single mother infamous for her affair with a married man, must be the prime suspect. And after a long interrogation behind closed doors Heather confesses to the crime.

Moved and angered by Heather's plight Naomi engages the help of Judith Friedman, a friend and lawyer, to defend the young woman. But when the truth at the heart of this astonishing case finally comes to light, it is Naomi who must confront how little she has truly understood her town, her friend, and herself.

Jean Hanff Korelitz is the author of 'The Properties of Breath', a collection of poems, and 'A Jury of Her Peers', available in paperback from Pan Books. A graduate from Dartmouth College and Clare College, Cambridge, she lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with her husband, the Irish poet Paul Muldoon, and their daughter.