The Majority

Description

Inspired by history, a riveting novel of love and friendship, motherhood and ambition, and one woman’s fight to be a Supreme Court justice.

Half of the United States is waiting for Justice Sylvia Olin Bernstein to die. The other half is praying for her to hold on. At 83, “the contemptuous S.O.B.” doesn’t have much time left. What she has is a story, one she has wrested from the grip of history to tell herself—of how she rose to her historic position on the Supreme Court, and the barriers she broke along the way.

Told over fifty years, from losing her mother at a young age, to falling in love, to navigating an unplanned pregnancy and motherhood, to learning how to spar with a sexist mentor, Sylvia’s personal story reveals the intimate truth about who she was as she ascended to her modern throne: not just a brilliant mind, but a daughter, a best friend, a wife, mother, and advocate. While caught in a dramatic tug of war between the competing desires of success and family, truth and convenience, progress and patience, she will be given a chance to change the course of American history – and give voice, at last, to the majority.  

Set against the vibrant sweep of the 20th century, THE MAJORITY brings us into the sacrifices, heartaches, and complex emotional life of a powerful woman ahead of her time, whose life and work turn out to have supreme stakes.Praise for The Majority:

“THE MAJORITY is a tiny hammer in Silver’s hand, undetectable and hovering overhead, the act of reading like a trigger breaking you apart over and over again.”—Natashia Deon, author of NAACP-nominated novels, The Perishing and Grace
 
“A story of secrets, impossible choices, and how we negotiate the uneasy space between our personal and public lives. Like Curtis Sittenfeld’s AMERICAN WIFE, THE MAJORITY transforms the life of a singular woman into a compelling narrative that illuminates the most important themes playing out in America today.”—Amanda Eyre Ward, New York Times-bestselling author of The Jetsetters
 
“THE MAJORITY is the great American novel you will urge your daughters and sisters and friends to read. From post-war Brooklyn to the gold-trimmed curtains of the Supreme Court, the story of Sylvia Olin Bernstein is rendered with such clarity and compassion that readers will, in in the words of S.O.B., reconsider everything they thought they knew about the remarkable women who transformed American history.” —Julia Fierro, author of Cutting Teeth and The Gypsy Moth SummerElizabeth L. Silver is the author of the legal thriller The Execution of Noa P. Singleton, which was an Amazon Best Book of the Year, and a selection for the Target Emerging Author Series. A graduate of the Temple University Beasley School of Law, Silver has worked as an attorney in California and Texas, where she was a judicial clerk for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.US