A Special Relationship-Douglas Kennedy

A Special Relationship

Douglas Kennedy

Atria, Jan 4 2011, $16.00

ISBN: 9781439199138

American journalist Sally Goodchild and British reporter Tony Hobbs meet on a Red Cross helicopter flying over the flooded Juba River Valley in Somalia.  They are immediately attracted to one another.  When they escape a harrowing near death incident, their desire for each others grows; she especially believes he saved her life.  The two reporters begin a tryst while continuing their coverage.

When Sally becomes pregnant, the duet agrees to move to London to raise their offspring together.  Her pregnancy contains health problems and not long afterward Sally loses her job.  Sally struggles emotionally too, but Tony is not there for her.  After their son Jack is born, Sally suffers from a severe case of postpartum depression that leads to her placement in a psychiatric ward.  Finally released from the hospital, Sally learns of Tony’s duplicity as he concealed key elements of his life from the mother of his son.  With no place else to turn as a stranger in a strange land the alienated American seeks relief in the alien British courts.

Told from Sally’s perspective, A Special relationship is a special contemporary drama as two individuals used to working the foreign beat try to adapt to family-hood in Hobbs’ home front as Douglas Kennedy captures the major differences between British and American societies.  Insight into the British law enhances an engaging character driven medical-legal thriller.

Harriet Klausner

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