Judge Jackie Martin’s job is to impose order on the most chaotic families in New York City. So how is she blindsided when the man she loves walks out on her? Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Both Are True by Reyna Marder Gentin, which releases on October 5th 2021!
Jackie Martin is a woman whose intelligence and ambition have earned her a coveted position as a judge on the Manhattan Family Court—and left her lonely at age 39. When she meets Lou Greenberg, Jackie thinks she’s finally found someone who will accept her exactly as she is. But when Lou’s own issues, including an unresolved yearning for his ex-wife, make him bolt without explanation, Jackie must finally put herself under the same microscope as the people she judges. When their worlds collide in Jackie’s courtroom, she learns that sometimes love’s greatest gift is opening you up to love others
“What’s on tap, Angela?” Jackie perused the docket sheet, but she was never good with names. The list was a long litany of abandonment, abuse, domestic violence, drugs, neglect, juvenile delinquency.
“Only one new matter, Clark. A neglect. Here’s the petition.” She pulled it up on Jackie’s monitor.
The charges named only the mother, Darlene Clark. The fathers were often missing in action, as though these troubled families had sprung from a vast maternal pool without any male input.
This mom, Darlene Clark, was accused of neglecting her two daughters, ages seven and five. According to the Department of Social Services, Clark had failed to ensure the girls’ attendance at school, not taken them for routine medical care and inoculations, and not fed them sufficiently.
When her chief court officer, Mike, called the Clark case, Jackie looked up from her computer screen. She motioned to Angela, who was immediately by her side.
“What are those kids doing in here?” Jackie hardly ever saw the children who were the subjects of the neglect or abuse cases. Yet here they were, two girls carefully dressed for the occasion in matching denim shorts and purple t- shirts.
“Potential in-court removal. Imminent risk of harm,” Angela said, leaning over to speak in Jackie’s ear.
As she spoke, the caseworker, flanked by two additional court
officers who appeared out of nowhere, escorted the Clark children from the courtroom in stunned silence. Darlene Clark, who may not have completely understood the legal ramifications of what was happening, understood enough. She let out an ear-splitting wail, a blaring distress signal emanating from the deepest core of her being.
That keening—so unnatural and otherworldly—sent Jackie back to her parents’ house on Long Island . . .
She’s ten years old and it’s springtime. On top of a bush that abuts the front porch, a robin has built a nest. The eggs are blue. She understands why the color is called robin’s egg blue, because it has an intensity of identity and a purity she’s never seen anywhere else. Before and after school Jackie checks on the nest, watches the mother sitting protectively on the eggs. A couple of weeks pass and miraculously the tiny baby birds hatch. Now both mother and father go back and forth to the nest, sustaining the young with worms. Jackie loves the birds like they are the pets her mother has never allowed.
One afternoon, Jackie is inside playing the piano when she hears the most piercing, grief-filled sound. That keening. When she races to the window, a hawk is inches from the nest. The mother bird is inconsolable. It’s a sound that Jackie never would have thought the bird capable of making, a howling so profound. Jackie bangs on the window and flails her arms, shouting at the hawk, “Drop the baby bird, drop him!” The hawk flies away, baby bird in its mouth, while the robin’s death knell continues. In another moment, the mother bird quiets and turns back to the nest. Jackie imagines her finding the strength to comfort the babies that are left after a loss that is unfathomable. The father, attentive when times were good, is nowhere to be seen.
And now this woman in her courtroom was making that same sound.
