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Mommy’s law
Ayelet Waldman’s legal brief
BY JULIA HANNA
Daughter’s Keeper
By Ayelet Waldman. Sourcebooks Landmark, 346 pages, $24.


An up-front mention of the author’s bio would seem to be in order when a novel so clearly reflects the writer’s personal experience and passionate beliefs. Ayelet Waldman is the mother of four children and a one-time criminal-defense attorney for the Federal Public Defender’s office in Los Angeles who now teaches a seminar at UC Berkeley on the legal and social implications of the war on drugs. Motherhood and a law degree aren’t required to write about the issues that concern Daughter’s Keeper, but they sure don’t hurt. The book includes heartfelt details and descriptions of family dynamics, particularly the freezes and thaws between buttoned-up Elaine and her willful daughter, Olivia. It also uses its characters to walk readers through the ramifications of mandatory minimum sentences — the stiff penalties passed by Congress in the 1980s that can still send first-time, nonviolent drug offenders to jail for five to 10 years and more.

Waldman is a perfectionist, nailing down her characters’ qualities so precisely that they can verge on types. Arthur, Elaine’s fiancé (Olivia’s father, a fling, split years ago), is a soy-milk-drinking, self-absorbed bobo who exercises excessively yet enjoys making show-off gourmet dinners. He resents Olivia’s annoying tendency to ask for money and get arrested for the cause du jour because it interferes with plans to buy a condo in Tahoe. Olivia, meanwhile, lives a world away from Berkeley in a down-and-out section of Oakland with her Mexican lover, Jorge. "What she cared about was something she defined loosely as freedom and equality, and her intent was to work in some way to better the lot of others; she just wasn’t sure how. She was waiting tables while she tried to figure it out." These subtler ironic touches show Waldman’s skill as a sharp-eyed observer of human behavior. In the same way, Elaine’s reluctant mothering is neatly summed up by the surprise she feels when Olivia unexpectedly accepts a last-minute dinner invitation and she starts to worry that she hasn’t bought enough shrimp.

When Olivia takes a message from Jorge’s drug connection, she enters a nightmarish world where momentary failures of judgment can result in lost years in prison. The author of three "Mommy Track Mysteries," Waldman knows how to set a plot in motion quickly and hold reader interest through every twist and swerve. There’s a slick, cinematic quality to her story that makes a movie seem inevitable; no doubt it will bring attention to its cause in the same way that Sister Helen Prejean’s Dead Man Walking did the death penalty. Stunned by the turn her life has taken, Olivia suppresses the urge to call out to the officers that they’ve confused her with someone else. Anyone, Waldman suggests, can be subject to the indifferent chokehold of mandatory minimum sentencing — even white girls from good homes.

Olivia’s Prince Charming is her attorney, Izaya Feingold-Upchurch, the bastard, dreadlock-wearing son of a famous black lawyer and his white, Jewish lover. His romantic interest in his client serves as fine plot thickener, particularly when it comes out that Olivia is pregnant with Jorge’s child. Izaya’s other role, unfortunately, is to take us on a heavily narrated tour of the legal system. When Waldman editorializes through her characters, the dialogue sounds staged and wordy. "It used to be that a judge could look at a defendant and make a sentencing decision based on how much time he thought the defendant deserved to serve," Izaya tells Olivia. "But all that changed under the federal sentencing guidelines. They are not guidelines at all. They are hard and fast rules under which judges completely lost their sentencing discretion. Nowadays, a judge’s sole role in a federal case is to apply a series of mathematical equations . . . " Etc. etc.

Olivia is a likable, flawed character, and the push-pull of her relationship with Elaine — and, later, the triangle the two form with Olivia’s child, Luna — provides some of the novel’s most natural dramatic moments. When depicting the hesitant advances, furious retreats, and boundless love that mark the bond between parent and child, Waldman makes her most convincing argument.

Ayelet Waldman reads next Saturday, October 25, at 7 p.m. at WordsWorth, 30 Brattle Street in Harvard Square; call (617) 354-5201.


Issue Date: October 17 - 23, 2003
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