Rescue Book

The critically acclaimed author of Every Day returns with a dazzling new work — as compelling as if your own life were suddenly turned upside down by the surprising, maddening, invigorating arrival of a kind of love you never expected.

Paige Austin has interesting work, a stable marriage, and a circle of women friends who help soothe the empty spot she would have filled with the child she can't conceive. Then the stepson she hardly knows, Malachi MacGowan, walks into her life. An impossibly tall, smart-talking young man, he makes her feel certifiably old — and yet edgily, wonderfully alive.

In a few electric days, Mal and Paige seem to forge a connection neither of them can fully fathom. She is no longer childless, and Mal basks in a love unprecedented in his seventeen years. Then, as abruptly as he arrived, he stalks away — into an existence defined by friends and activities Paige can only imagine. Left with an unraveling marriage and a wounded heart, she attempts her own kind of escape...until Mal's inevitable crisis crashes in.

With her keen eye and courageous take on the mutable faces of love, Elizabeth Richards vividly illumines how an ordinary life can change in a heartbeat — and then change again.

Publishers Weekly

A 40-year-old New York City wife finds her disappointment in being childless alleviated through the care she offers her troubled 17-year-old stepson in Richards's fast-paced, witty second novel (after Every Day). Unable to conceive with her corporate lawyer husband and reluctant to adopt, Paige MacGowan finds baby hunger threatening to spoil her otherwise happy life. A professional bookbinder and second wife of Ian, Paige is also depressed and needy following the recent death of her adored father. Looking after "the littles," the four children in the after-school day-care program she runs, helps somewhat, but it isn't until Malachi, Ian's smart, antagonistic, sarcastic son from his first marriage, is kicked out of school in Brooklyn for selling drugs, and his mother turns to Ian and Paige to provide a home for the "delinquent," that Paige's emptiness begins to fill up. Though she first met Mal when he was 13, Paige has been careful to keep her distance from his disapproving attitude; now, she finds herself giving up her home office so that he can use it as a bedroom. As she tries to provide Mal with the structure and love he needs, Paige begins turning away from Ian, who in turn feels upstaged by his own son. A coterie of sister second wives give Paige advice and support on how to deal with a stepchild, but just when she thinks she has Mal on course, he rebels in a melodramatic fashion. Richards excels at dialogue, capturing teen lingo and other colloquial conversation, and speeding the plot along with admirable dexterity. Though Mal never seems as exhausting as he's meant to be, Paige is a completely realized character, a recognizable middle-aged woman facing the opportunities and limitations of the second half of her life. Agent, Ann Rittenberg. (Mar.)