Counting Backwards
Pre-Order Now!
Coming March 11, 2025
A routine immigration case, a shocking legacy. Jessa Gidney’s quest for justice draws her into the heart of an abhorrent conspiracy. As she uncovers her personal ties to a heartbreaking past, her life takes a dramatic turn, in this emotionally riveting novel inspired by true events.
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 ICE detention center. There she meets Isobel Pérez–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. 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.
Alternating between the past and present, and deftly tackling timely-yet-timeless issues such as reproductive rights, incarceration, 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. A moving story of two remarkable women that you’ll remember for years to come.
Praise
I've been a huge fan of Jacqueline Friedland's writing since I devoured He Gets That From Me a few years ago, but Counting Backwards is her best novel yet. In this dual narrative story Friedland fearlessly explores issues of incarceration and eugenics, of infertility and the legacy we inherit from our ancestors. This is 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.
COUNTING BACKWARDS hits all the “R’s: Redemption, Responsibility, Resilience, Relevance, and absolutely Riveting. . . Friedland gifts readers with richly developed characters in a dual-timeline tale that explores fertility, inequality, and reproductive rights – both past and present with an eye toward the future . . .Counting Backwards is more than a powerful read, ultimately it teaches us ALL how to move forward
Like Perkins-Valdez’s Take My Hand, Friedland’s novel exposes a shocking–and even more recent–betrayal of women by government institutions . . . featuring a refreshing twist, [it] is unputdownable, not to mention incredibly resonant in these uncertain times.
A dual-timeline novel inspired by real events, Counting Backwards examines the ways women's bodies have been used against them in American society both past and present. With well-developed, complex characters, the story truly comes to life as both Carrie and Jessa try to navigate the hands they've been dealt. As secrets and connections are revealed, layer by surprising layer, Friedland explores both responsibility and redemption with heft and grace.
Counting Backwards is a tightly-woven dual-timeline novel that explores the way in which the sins of a family member can reverberate for generations and how society’s mistreatment of women hasn’t changed in decades. Jacqueline Friedland’s ripped-from-the-headlines story is an Erin Brockovich for our times.
Timely, perceptive, and inspiring, Counting Backwards is truly a book for this moment. By masterfully combining legal history with some of our most pressing present day issues, Jackie Friedland delivers a tour de force about family, female independence, and choosing to embrace what really matters. Only an absolute pro like Friedland could write a book this smart and this pertinent that still makes readers cry at the end.
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