Books Set in the United States

The Four Ms. Bradwells, by Meg Waite Clayton (2011)

I really wanted to like The Four Ms. Bradwells and, in fact, the book started off very promising. Somewhere along the line, however, the novel lost its momentum for me.

The Four Ms. Bradwells is the story about four women who became close friends while in law school during the early 1980s. The story line jumps from their law school days to the present day, where each woman, now in middle age, has been blessed with a successful career. The novel opens at the Senate confirmation hearings where Betts (Elsbieta Zhukovski) has been nominated to be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The other three women are there to provide moral support. During the course of the Senate hearings, questions are asked about a mysterious death that occurred during their law school days. The prepared answer is unsatisfying and may derail Betts chance for approval to the Supreme Court.

The women decide to escape the public eye by spending the weekend on an island in Chesapeake Bay that is owned by the Ginger Conrad’s family. It is the same island where the death occurred nearly 30 years earlier. Was it really a suicide, or was it something more malicious?

The title of the novel, The Four Ms. Bradfords, comes from an actual old Supreme Court case, Bradford v. Illinois (83 US 130), in which one Myra Bradwell had been denied admission to the Illinois Bar in 1869 merely because she was female. Over a century later, women were allowed admission to the Bar, but in the 1980s women were still hassled for being in law school (I know from personal experience).

Each chapter is told through the voice of one of the four friends ~ Mia, Laney, the African-American, Betts, the Polish-American, and Ginger, the blue-blood. Each of the women have faced and overcome discrimination during their careers. Some of these fights are ones still faced by women in the workforce.

Unfortunately, as the author begins to expound on the travails of each of the women, I felt as though the story was contrived. All social issues facing women, from death, divorce, affairs, raising children, etc., seemed to befall these women.

The character of Max, the poor, but intellectual and caring architect living on Conrad’s island, seemed to be included solely to portray a “good” man. Not all men are evil and out to destroy a successful woman.

The climatic ending was also a disappointment. By the time I finished the book, I really didn’t care about how or why the death from the women’s law school days had occurred.

Read: September 6, 2011