Jewish Book Festival Jacqueline Friedland presents Counting Backwards

Two women from different worlds, joined by the love of a child displaced by war, discover friendship and healing as their lives intersect with a mysterious wounded Vietnam vet named Jack.

Told in two alternating narratives bound by a shocking parallel of issues such as reproductive rights 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. In 2022 New York, lawyer Jessa Gidney takes on pro bono work at a detention center and uncovers a disturbing pattern of medical abuse-one with ties to her own family.

In 1927 Virginia, Carrie Buck, a young woman from a poor background, becomes the face of a landmark eugenics case.

As Jessa builds her case, she discovers chilling parallels between Carrie’s fate and the present.

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