Catch Your Breath - Hardcover

Auerbach, Jessica

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0399141669 ISBN 13: 9780399141669

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1996

Synopsis

"Gripping . . . Fast-paced action and finely tuned tension . . . A meaty domestic thriller."          
--Kirkus Reviews

Rosie Sloan is scared to death. Her husband moved out, her two-year-old son has developed terrifying asthma, and now she is charged with child abuse--an accusation she believes no one can take seriously.  

The more frantically Rosie attempts to prove she's a good mother, the more tightly she's trapped by a system that doesn't believe her. Either she's going crazy or someone intends to destroy her. Completely.

"[A] gripping thriller . . . ripped straight from today's headlines .  . . Auerbach masterfully captures the many legal and medical nuances and proves adept at sustaining the suspense."
--Library Journal      

"Auerbach brings her adult characters to vivid life in this tense tale."  
--Booklist

About this title

About the Author:

Jessica Auerbach is the author of Sleep, Baby, Sleep. She lives in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Auerbach (Sleep, Baby, Sleep, 1994, etc.) turns a current tabloid and talk-show preoccupation into a slow-starting but ultimately gripping tale of a mother who, accused of child abuse, is forced to confront not only the judicial but the medical system as well. Rosie Sloan, a doctor's daughter, and her estranged husband Quinn, a policeman, never come into full focus as they trade clich‚s, emote, and gradually begin to understand what is going on. Rosie, who dropped out of her pre-med studies to marry Quinn (thus bitterly disappointing her father), learned enough medicine so that she can sometimes ask the right question. She doesn't do so here, though, until it's almost too late. When Jason, her two-year-old son, starts having asthma-like attacks, Rosie rushes him to the ER, where the attending physician suggests she consult Dr. Greg Linder, a specialist in childhood asthma. Linder is very caring, and asks Rosie to have coffee with him so that he can go over Jason's treatment in detail. Coffee is followed by lunch, and Rosie thinks she's falling in love. Meanwhile, however, Jason doesn't improve. Then there's a surprise call from a social worker, responding to a charge of child abuse. Even Quinn finds Rosie suspicious. At the hearing, she is not only accused of suffering from Munchausen's syndrome by proxy--``inducing illness in a child in order to gain attention for herself''--but the SIDS death of her first baby is brought up. Jason is put in foster care, contact with him forbidden, and Rosie must undergo psychiatric evaluation. With Quinn's help, though, she begins to fight back, does some sleuthing of her own, and, asking the right medical questions at last, saves both herself and Jason in a page-turning conclusion. Fast-paced action and finely tuned tension turn a potentially tiresome tearjerker into a meaty domestic thriller. (Literary Guild alternate selection) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0399141669
• ISBN 13: 9780399141669
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 247