![]() Several successful projects and one platonic marriage later, Kern is living in San Francisco her attacker is running for president. In the late '70s, Kern and her friends open an uptown shop selling art and accessories she befriends a photographer who eventually spies some of her secret, sappy poetry (``The death of a dream/is surrounded by pain'') and invites her to collaborate on a book. Her rapist (a crudely drawn, heartless SOB) is living in San Francisco and entering politics. She drops out of college, moves to Manhattan's Greenwich Village, and manages to make it through the '60s without having sex, even though she hangs around with the artistic residents of a communal apartment. She goes against her mother's wishes only once, when she tells her beloved fiancÇ he backs away, and Kern clams up for good. ![]() Kern's uptight mother convinces her to fudge the facts and claim to have been in an automobile accident. The novel opens in 1962, when Karen Kern has the misfortune to be acquaintance-raped (before the term has even been coined) by a wealthy, good-looking Harvard law student. But Sloan delivers a satisfyingly tricky plot in a narrative brisk enough to keep readers engaged all the way to the deliberately delayed triumphant courtroom scene. ![]() ![]() Not that this is a literary masterpiece: The first-time novelist has an annoying habit of detailing the background of even the most minor characters. Just when it was beginning to look impossible, former lawyer Sloan pumps some life into the crowded field of legal thrillers. ![]()
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