"This Was Not the Plan starts out as a funny and sharply observed campus novel and then deepens into a thought-provoking examination of the complicated and always thorny politics of abortion. Daphne Uviller is a shrewd and compassionate writer, able to imagine a wide variety of intersecting lives and outlooks, and find humor in even the darkest moments.” — Tom Perrotta, author of Election and Tracy Flick Can’t Win
When theater director Sylvia Tanisman wins her first Tony award, her husband takes the occasion to announce he’s divorcing her. Sylvia flees the shambles of her marriage by accepting a visiting professorship at Linden, an elite college in Pierre, New York. A few counties north, high school senior Meg Croyden has
narrowly survived a self-destructive, rebellious youth and is headed to Linden on a full scholarship. In the town of Pierre, lifelong resident and devout Catholic Caroline Byrne McClanahan struggles with the secret shame of a family that is falling apart. When circumstances bring them all to the local abortion clinic in Pierre, the fates of these three women hailing from starkly different worlds are forever entwined.
This Was Not the Plan tackles one of the most important issues of our time with humor, compassion, and authenticity. The collision of the lives of Sylvia, Meg, and Caroline reminds us of the dangers of thinking in black and white and the possibility of finding humanity in each other, even where you least expect it."
"In a city brimming with opportunities for heroism, twenty-seven-year-old Zephyr Zuckerman has often fantasized about committing acts of bravery that would make front-page news. Now she may get her big break–though it may require plunging a few toilets. When the superintendent of her parents’ Greenwich Village brownstone is led away in handcuffs, unemployed Zephyr takes over his post and unleashes her inner sleuth: discovering titillating secrets about her tenants–from a smoky-voiced Frenchwoman who entertains throngs of unsavory visitors to a moody musician who just has to be hiding something–and realizing that her new reality is far more intriguing than her imagination.
Soon Zephyr has sussed out wrongs that stretch from losers on the Internet to art fraud and an international crime ring. The mob thinks she’s in the FBI, and the FBI thinks she’s in the mob–a predicament she needs to clear up fast. But perhaps not before a cute, surly exterminator helps her solve the mystery of what to do with the rest of her life…."
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