The Trial of Abigail Goodman

The veteran author of some 50 books ( Citizen Tom Paine ; The Immigrants , etc.) stays up to date in a fast-paced, often electrifying novel dramatizing the abortion controversy. Sometime in the near future, Abigail Goodman, feminist history professor in a sleepy Southern town and 41-year-old mother of two, finds herself unexpectedly pregnant; she decides, with her husband's approval, to have an abortion. Shortly thereafter, she is indicted under a new state law that retroactively makes abortion after the first trimester an act of murder punishable by death. Fast is a master of courtroom pyrotechnics, and sparks fly when the defense team grills the ambitious DA's star witnesses: a Catholic bishop, a Hasidic rabbi and an obstetrician who once performed abortions. Though the sensational trial gives full play to both sides, the author's sympathies obviously lie with his forthright, brave and nervous heroine, who views the law as a weapon in men's campaign to subjugate women. Fast intersperses the main narrative with dispatches from U.S. and foreign journalists' coverage of the trial and attendant redneck violence which, if not always realistic, do provide a global perspective on what he sees as America's parochial attitude toward abortion. (Sept.)