Susannah, A Lawyer

Young college graduate Susannah Reed is brutally attacked and nearly killed in 1877.

While recovering, she vows to study law, although The United State Supreme Court has just declared that women are "too timid and delicate" to be lawyers.

Susannah's fiance accepts her victim status and the child conceived during her sexual assault. However, he expects his wife be a beautiful object, not opposing counsel at the dinner table.

Susannah begins to study law at a firm in Chicago as she struggles unsuccessfully to combine her career with an engagement to a man who will not allow her to become an attorney. She meets Ted Nelson, a young lawyer who acts as her coach and mentor, applauds her ambition, and wants her to have what she wants. She passes the bar and is hired by the firm where she interned.

Susannah's handling of her cases brings her immediate success. She defends a battered wife who accidentally kills her husband, a young immigrant that the State's Attorney is harassing, and an accomplice in a big bank robbery. In the meantime, she must deal with her disabled daughter, the murder of a partner at the firm, and her relationship with Ted.

An early women’s rights scholar, Ruth Rymer practiced Family Law and lectured on “Women and the Law” in California before retiring to write.
She holds a Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Systems from The Fielding Institute and wrote her dissertation on the historical, sociological, and psychological aspects of divorce.
Dr. Rymer, listed in Best Lawyers in America 1988-2000, is Past President of both Queen’s Bench (Bay Area women attorneys) and the Northern California Chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. The author lives in the Bay Area with her husband. Susannah is her second book.