"On Juneteenth" by Annette Gordon-Reed; Liveright (128 pages, $15.95) ——— The first friend I made when I moved from Florida to the Twin Cities in 1987 was a woman from
Rosalind Bentley, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Stacey Abrams latest novel, While Justice Sleeps, feels modern until the protagonist comes home from a horrendous day and listens to annoying then menacing voicemails â left on a landline, attached to an answering machine, that beeps in between calls.
Why did she make such an anachronistic choice for the fictional 26-year-old U.S. Supreme Court law clerk at the heart of this sprawling thriller about the race to unravel a multinational conspiracy and save the life of one of the justices? I keep a landline and an answering machine, Abrams, 47, said. I keep a landline because if your service goes out, a landline still works. And I actually have a non-digital phone attached to one of my landlines.