Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press (November 30, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1611178320
ISBN-13: 978-1611178326
In the early 1970s, Laura Bauer decides to leave college and head fifty
miles north of her comfortable Atlanta home to manage a federally funded project aiding pregnant teenagers from the back roads of Appalachia.
Almost as young as her clients, Laura is immediately confronted with―and
almost overwhelmed by―a variety of young women in desperate
circumstances, having no other source of prenatal care.
When
Nighttime Shadows Fall, Diane Michael Cantor’s second novel, portrays
the world of these girls with compassion, hardscrabble humor, and
reverence for their families’ capacities to prevail despite hardships.
Among the characters are Mavis, a defiant, tough-as-nails preacher’s
daughter; Lisa, a victimized thirteen-year-old; Nell, a shy girl who is
constantly berated by herdomineering mother; and self-conscious Mandy,
whose proud husband, twice her age, detests any form of charity. As an
outsider whose urban upbringing is vastly different from those of her
clients, Laura must win their trust and overcome her own inexperience
and the magnitude of the need she finds.
The novel follows Laura as
she struggles to locate her clients during their first trimesters, when
they are still eligible for the project’s services but often trying to
conceal their pregnancies. As she overcomes their suspicions and tries
to help them during those first critical months, Laura comes to realize
she has prepared at least a few of them to open doors to their
unexpected futures, just as they have helped her find the determination
to face her own.
When Nighttime Shadows Fall movingly portrays
Laura’s clients as they search for love from boyfriends, husbands, and
babies. Some find it, but ultimately, through powerful revelations,
their strength comes from within.