by Hugh Ambrose
First published 2018
Mabel Willebrandt breaks barriers as a female lawyer to become Assistant Attorney General, then throws herself into enforcing Prohibition despite working with a corrupt and ineffective agency. Her fierce determination drives her to pursue bootleggers and rumrunners even though she never campaigned for the alcohol ban herself. Meanwhile, wealthy Republican Pauline Sabin takes the opposite path. Though she lacks formal training in law or politics, she climbs the party ranks and seizes the repeal movement as her cause. Sabin sees the fight against Prohibition as a way to bring newly voting women into politics and prove they can compete equally with men. The two women clash as Willebrandt enforces the law Sabin works to overturn. Around them swirls a world of crooked Prohibition agents, senators, feuding society women, and smugglers. Their battle reflects how the 18th and 19th Amendments, passed in the same year, gave women new power to reshape both themselves and American society.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, biography-memoir, political-thriller, legal-thriller, american-history
Vibes: emotional, fast-paced, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: United States
Period: 20th Century
368 pages · Hardcover · Berkley
Content warnings: sexism