cover image Staying Under

Staying Under

Carol McPhee. Papier-Mache Press, $22.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-1-57601-056-3

In the summer of 1948, 18-year-old Californian Joanne Ridley learns that she is pregnant and turns for help to her best friend, Maureen Lewis. The two young women at the heart of this affecting but somewhat stilted debut conspire to find a way for Joanne to get an illegal abortion. The impact of this event mysteriously shatters their friendship and reverberates through the next five decades of silence. Finally, Maureen is driven to reconnect with her childhood friend and find out exactly why Joanne ended their relationship at the end of that fateful summer. Using contrasting points of view, McPhee (who edited The Nonviolent Militant: Selected Writings of Teresa Billington-Greig) interweaves past and present, filling in the details of the women's separate adult lives (the nature of their marriages, husbands and children) while juxtaposing them against their childhood friendship and their teenage years. Evocative details of time and place and social mores are somewhat blunted by awkward dialogue, however. Although McPhee's background as a feminist and community activist is apparent, her novel is not a polemic for women's rights but an exploration of a close relationship that eventually survives time and experience. 10,000 first printing; $10,000 ad/promo; author tour. (Sept.)