Let 'em Eat Cake

It's tempting to call Jedren's uncommon first novel a ``sympathetic'' portrait of a blue-collar working mother, but to do so would be a disservice to its narrator. Anna, a stubborn Brooklynite, doesn't require anyone's sympathy, and if her story at first seems outwardly mundane and banal-Anna's an unskilled laborer, separated from her husband and caring for two young sons-a closer look reveals a dynamic chronicle of everyday challenges. By day, Anna delivers bakery goods to neighborhood supermarkets while a trusted co-worker watches her kids. Her profession requires her to lift heavy packages and to collect payment in cash, so there's a constant threat of injury or robbery. She meets merchants who try to rip her off and even rape her, and her supervisors, who don't take kindly to a woman in a traditionally male domain, try to intimidate her into quitting. Yet a Bronx childhood and an abusive father have taught Anna tenacity; tough but never inhumanly so, she weathers emotional as well as physical pummeling. One questionable note sounds during the speedy wrap-up, as an entrepreneurial woman meets Anna and helps her land a white-collar job, but this story rings true all the way down to the heat rash that Anna gets from her ill-fitting men's uniform. Jedren has given readers a heroine-and a fiction debut-worthy of admiration. (Sept.)