The Sabbathday River

From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
A River of Death Passion, betrayal, and infanticide are at the core of Jean Hanff Korelitz's latest novel, The Savvathday River , a riveting tale set in a small New England town ruled by rigid values and minimal tolerance. Utterly chilling in its depiction of both a horrifying crime and the narrow-mindedness of small-town America, the Sabbathday River is an unnerving yet fascinating treatise on the darker side of humanity. It's 1985 at the peak of the picturesque fall season in the tiny, ultraconservative town of Goddard, New Hampshire. Forty-something Naomi Roth is jogging along the Sabbathday River when she spots what she thinks is someone's doll floating in the water. But to her horror, Naomi discovers the doll is actually the body of a newborn baby girl: pale, lifeless, and bearing a puncture mark through her tiny chest.

Naomi carries the dead baby to the local police station, and suspicion quickly turns to young Heather Pratt, already shunned by the townsfolk for her flagrant adulterous affair with Ashley Deacon, a local married man. Heather has already given birth to an illegitimate child of Ashley's — a daughter named Polly — coincidentally within days of Ashley's wife bearing him a son. Heather's sins are compounded when she continues her affair with Ashley after Polly's birth and then further offends the sensibilities of several locals by breast-feeding her daughter in public, an act that angers a local storekeeper so much she ends up calling in the police.

Then Heather's world falls apart when her only living relative, hergrandmother,dies and Ashley breaks off their relationship abruptly and crudely. Heartbroken, Heather becomes reclusive and withdrawn, but townsfolk notice as the months go by that she appears to be pregnant again. And when the police pay Heather a visit while investigating the murder of the baby in the river, they discover she has recently given birth, though there is no baby to be found.

Subjected to an arduous and questionable interrogation by the local D.A., Heather at first denies that she was pregnant at all, then admits to having a baby that was stillborn, which she buried in a pond behind her house. But she insists that her baby was not the one that was pulled from the river. Heather's story is supported by the discovery of a second infant's body in the very pond she described. Yet rather than seeing this as evidence of her innocence with regard to the first baby's death, the D.A. constructs an intricate and somewhat bizarre scenario that fingers Heather for the death of both babies.

Naomi feels compelled to try to help Heather. For one thing, Heather is Naomi's star employee in the cooperative she put together to create and sell homemade quilts, rugs, and samplers, an effort that has blossomed into a highly successful catalogue business. But Naomi also feels a bond with the ostracized Heather in that Naomi, too, has been treated like an outsider by the townspeople despite having moved to the area nine years before.

In fact, the only person Naomi can truly call a friend is Judith Friedman, a lawyer and fellow ex-New Yorker who recently moved to the area with her husband. Naomi eventually convinces Judith to take on Heather's defense, which only solidifies the women's position as outcasts. While the story posed by the D.A. seems utterly far-fetched and ridiculous at first, bits of evidence are gradually uncovered that make it more and more believable, though no less shocking.

Heather's trial is depicted in salacious and intricate detail, a dramatic climax that raises as many questions as it answers. All the loose threads are eventually sewn into place, creating a tapestry of twisted values, chaotic morality, and unsettling insights that is totally absorbing and utterly unforgettable. The Sabbathday River delivers a scalding commentary on self-righteous intolerance, then offers up a number of appropriate and wholly satisfying comeuppances. In the end, Korelitz punctuates it all with a few surprising and provocative twists that cast a new light over all that came before, giving readers pause to reconsider their own hard-held values.

—Beth Amos

_{Beth Amos is the author of several mainstream suspense thrillers, includingSecond Sight, Eyes of Night and Cold White Fury . She lives in Richmond, Virginia, and is at work on her next novel.}

Gail Caldwell

Haunting...It has the riveting components of a good courtroom drama.
— The Boston Globe

Gabriella Stern

Engrossing...Disturbing...Ms. Korelitz has delivered a page-turner here — absorbing weekend or vacation reading for those in the mood for a suspenseful morality tale.
— Wall Street Journal

Polly Morrice

Jean Hanff Korelitz's engrossing second novel is a tale of adultery, infanticide and needlework. The Sabbathday River unfolds in 1985 in Goddard, New Hampshire, a tight-lipped, narrow-minded sort of place that could be a sister city to the inbred hamlets of Deliverance. Naomi Roth, the heroine, remains an outsider in Goddard despite her nine years' residence. Along with stimulating the local economy by running a successful crafts collective, Naomi sets the plot in motion with her discovery of a dead baby girl floating in the Sabbathday River.

At first, the county district attorney assumes the infant is hers -- a wounding irony, as Naomi has recently divorced her husband over his refusal to have children. But the DA's suspicions soon fix on another outsider: Heather Pratt, a Dartmouth dropout, who has carried on an open affair with a married man and borne a child by him. For these sins and for her obliviousness to public opinion, Heather and her baby are shunned by the townspeople. When she breastfeeds in public, an outraged storekeeper calls the police. (Korelitz clearly enjoys drawing parallels to another literary adulteress: Her Heather, who sews for Naomi's collective, embroiders a sampler "with an outsize A of deepest red in the upper-left corner").

Within days of Naomi's grim discovery, Heather is "invited" to the police station and subjected to relentless interrogation by the district attorney, Robert Charter. Under duress, she confesses to killing the baby found in the Sabbathday River. To Naomi, the only person in Goddard who has stood by her, Heather insists she has never harmed anyone. When the body of a second infant is found, Naomi has reason to champion Heather's innocence. Charter, however, accuses the young woman of murdering two newborns.

Here the novel shifts into high courtroom drama, pitting Charter, whose case leans heavily on coincidence and self-righteousness, against Heather's public defender, Judith Friedman. Like Naomi, Judith is a New Yorker and Jewish -- two traits that Goddard distrusts -- and the two women become close friends. Judith bluntly tells Naomi that she is fighting more for women's rights than for Heather; even Naomi, who has felt compelled "to speak for the one they had already condemned," doesn't much like this "sluggish, lackluster girl."

The account of Heather's trial is vividly realized, particularly Judith's masterful cross-examination of Heather's callous lover. Yet Korelitz is aiming for more than a suspenseful yarn; she seeks also to explore the big issues of religious faith, women's sexuality and the evaporation of the radical spirit of the '60s and '70s.

She is less successful handling these large themes, perhaps because the allegorical nature of many of her characters -- Charter, in particular, is strictly one-dimensional -- leaves little room for exploring the gray areas of human behavior. Both the trial and the novel come to satisfying ends, with twists that will surprise some readers but will have those who pick up on Korelitz's judiciously scattered clues nodding along. In all, The Sabbathday River is a splendid read, if no advertisement for life in the Granite State.
— Salon

James Polk

It's hard to be sure just what...Korelitz is up to with her second novel....Maybe it's best just to read The Sabbathy River as a courtroom drama, the genre in which it works best....About three-quarters of the way through the book, Naomi seems to gain insight into why, after almost a decade in Goddard, she remains a stranger...
—New York Times Book Review

From The Critics

This is a very well written book, although it could be a little tauter with some of the gush turned down to a trickle. But it keeps the reader interested, pulling one along to its surprising and morally complex denouement.

Publishers Weekly

When Naomi Roth pulls the body of a stabbed infant girl from the Sabbathday River, she precipitates an investigation that devastates the small New Hampshire town she hoped to save. Smart and engrossing, this thriller addresses the complex morality behind its characters' behavior with gravity and deep humanity. Idealistic Vista volunteer and New York Jewish liberal in search of a cause, Naomi turns local crafts into a booming catalogue business by the mid-'80s but never quite fits into the tightly knit New England community whose secrets unravel as townsfolk point fingers--mostly at Heather Pratt, the proud and lonely girl who delicately embroiders traditional samplers and unapologetically bears the illegitimate child of a married man. Naomi sees little of the sisterhood she preaches among Heather's co-workers and neighbors, excepting only recent arrival Judith Friedman, a fellow Jewish New Yorker who befriends Naomi and defends the modern-day Hester in court. It turns out, however, that even Judith has her secrets. Korelitz (A Jury of Her Peers) traces the evolution of '60s idealism to '80s self-absorption, feminist vision to emotional chaos, religious devotion to moral decay. After the trial's dramatic climax, the reader is left with disturbing insights into the roots and ramifications of infanticide. Korelitz securely navigates the scientific shoals surrounding the crime. Her rich, often lyrical language occasionally becomes fussy but in general serves her well in conveying local color and atmosphere and in describing the moments of passion and betrayal in this compelling study of modern women with old-fashioned desires.

Library Journal

From the first page, Korelitz's (A Jury of Her Peers) spellbinding second novel is totally engrossing. Naomi Roth, a New York transplant living in a small New Hampshire town, finds herself drawn to the plight of Heather, a young social outcast who is accused of murdering her baby. Though a local in the area for nine years, Naomi still feels like an outsider herself and is compelled to offer support to Heather when the townspeople rush to judgment over the case and subsequent trial. The story is riveting for its compelling story and rich characters. Korelitz gives the reader everything: characters you love to hate, cultural clashes, mystery, and courtroom drama at its best. -- Caroline Mann, Univ. of Portland Lib., OR

School Library Journal

YA-To the tourists who take day trips to Goddard, NH, during the fall foliage season, the town appears quaint and wholesome, yet its inhabitants ostracize those who are different, and Naomi and Heather are different. Naomi is a nonnative Jew who runs a needlework collective. Heather loves a married man and is oblivious to the community's scorn when she becomes pregnant. When Naomi finds a dead baby in the Sabbathday River, Goddard immediately decrees Heather as the guilty party and vilifies her. During the trial, her menstrual cycle, her trysts with the married man, and other aspects of her personal life are brought forth as evidence. These sordid details contrast with her lawyer's brilliant courtroom maneuvers. This satisfying story of courtroom drama, mystery, and friendships is filled with metaphors, lyrical phrases, and intriguing characters. This is not an easy read, but a disturbing one that examines the dissimilar lives of two women linked by friendship and, ultimately, two dead babies.-Pam Spencer, Young Adult Literature Specialist, Virginia Beach, VA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Ann Prichard

The Sabbathday River flows deep and dark, a suspenseful legal thriller with distaff sensibility...Korelitz's novel has a colorful cast of women...
— USA Today

Kirkus Reviews

The murder of an unidentified newborn baby prompts a group of women to reexamine their place on the scale ranging from cost-free political commitment on one end to intractable personal lives on the other. Set in the conservative small town of Goddard, New Hampshire, in the late 1980s, the story opens as Naomi Roth discovers a dead infant girl floating in the Sabbathday River near town. Naomi has established Flourish, a profitable cooperative of craftswomen, in the spirit of her 1960s-inspired liberalism. As an avid feminist, socialist, and atheist, then, she is outraged when the investigation into the murder-led by duplicitous state prosecutor Charter-selects Heather Pratt, a young, unconventional single mother, as its main suspect. When Naomi discovers another dead baby girl behind Pratt's house-this one actually Heather's-Pratt is charged with a double murder, and Naomi's astonishment curdles into rage at this patent injustice. Allied with Judith Friedman, an aggressive lawyer and, like Naomi, a transplanted New Yorker, Naomi assembles a defense for Heather that culminates in a suspense-filled trial that destroys Charter's case. Yet Naomi's notion of the political nobility of the defense is corrupted as Korelitz (A Jury of Her Peers, 1996) reveals the hidden motives underwriting the action of most of the players. Search not for a virtuous man here: except for the good women's lovers, the male species is generally freeloading, irresponsible, arrogant, and unreliable. Nonetheless, Korelitz plots so well, and writes her women so persuasively, that the story suffers only slightly from this lack of dimension. An often gripping account onto which Korelitz has grafted some minorthemes concerning patriarchal exploitation, the role of faith and God, and the obstacles facing strong, sexually threatening women. If these don't burden the novel too badly, they do distract from a powerful tale of the tragic enigma of murdered children.