Another recommendation from Paddy. This was very good, but maybe a bit thematic for a novel. Three main characters through whom the story is told. Ruth, a middle aged black maternity nurse in a US hospital, the curiously named Kennedy, her defence lawyer, and a white supremacist whose name I forget (Turk?). The basics of the plot are quite simple - Turk + wife appear in maternity hospital, Ruth helps with the birth of her son, but Turk objects to a black nurse being involved. She subsequently tries to save the baby’s life after complications following a circumcision, and he accuses her of having killed the baby. Most of the rest is her trial, and she is eventually acquitted.
At the end it transpires that his wife is herself black or mixed race, and Turk has a change of heart and Ruth midwives his 2nd baby with a new wife. Quite a chunky and sprawling (not in bad way) novel, but as I said above too thematic for me; the characters are too emblematic.
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