All Alice wants is to retire. Until the call for justice gets in the way.
Alice Arden canât wait to retire in eighteen months, but her boss at the federal discrimination and harassment agency she works at has other ideas. She assigns Alice to head a newly created task force responsible for catching more lawbreakers, and Alice canât refuse.
Already burned out and suffering from a worsening disability that might put her in a wheelchair, Alice finds more than she had bargained for in her new team with racism, a sociophobe, and hidden agendas at play. Threats on their lives because of a case theyâre working on drive Alice to the bottle until she discovers an unnerving secret.
Forget retirement. Alice is about to embark on delivering justice in the sexual harassment case of her career, and if she goes down, itâll be with guns blazing.
All Alice wants is to retire. Until the call for justice gets in the way.
Alice Arden canât wait to retire in eighteen months, but her boss at the federal discrimination and harassment agency she works at has other ideas. She assigns Alice to head a newly created task force responsible for catching more lawbreakers, and Alice canât refuse.
Already burned out and suffering from a worsening disability that might put her in a wheelchair, Alice finds more than she had bargained for in her new team with racism, a sociophobe, and hidden agendas at play. Threats on their lives because of a case theyâre working on drive Alice to the bottle until she discovers an unnerving secret.
Forget retirement. Alice is about to embark on delivering justice in the sexual harassment case of her career, and if she goes down, itâll be with guns blazing.
EEOC HEADQUARTERS WASHINGTON, D.C.
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âWeâre getting heavy pressure from the White House right now,â EEOC Chair Ami Saitou said. âTheyâre worried about Obamaâs legacy as a civil rights champion. So, the commissioners voted to establish a team in Austin to quickly uncover lots of discrimination in Texas and the surrounding states. I want you to lead that team.â
âWhy me?â Alice could barely breathe. âWhy on earth did you pick me?â This was the last thing Alice had expected when sheâd been summoned from her office in New Orleans to headquarters.
Chair Saitouâs dark eyes seemed to drill through Aliceâs soul. After an eternity, she glanced down at Aliceâs dossier and flipped through the file. Looking up, she said, âMs. Arden, you have over twenty-five years with the agency. Youâre one of our most skilled managers. I need results fast, and I know you can deliver.â
Pain flexed up Aliceâs right leg, which had been damaged in an  auto accident in her teens. It always did when her stress level escalated precipitously. Staring at her lap, Alice automatically massaged the tightened muscle. She looked around the corner office and glanced to her right, spying a picture of the chair with President Obama; both were dressed to the hilt, probably at some White House function. The office was devoid of anything else personal, giving it a cold, sterile feeling. In the background, Alice heard a train rumble from Union Station.
âWell?â the chair asked.
âUh, yes, IâŠâ
âWonderful.â Saitou slid a folder to Alice. âHereâs your first case. Sexual harassment. Commissioner Feldstein wants this on a fast track. The attorney handling the case for the Charging Party (CP) is a friend of his from law schoolâJack Caulfield. I want you to handle it personally.â
Alice nodded, a pit forming in her stomach. Her head throbbed. Now sheâd be on Feldsteinâs blacklist if she couldnât find âcause.â He was vindictive that way. If you didnât deliver what he thought you should, he gave you hell.
âYouâll have to move carefully,â Saitou said. âTurns out the alleged harasser is the grandson of the big Republican donor Jack Stewart IV. You need to get it right.â
Saitou stood. âMy assistant, Ms. Wilson, will provide you with assignment details. Keep me posted on the case.â
Alice struggled to her feet, shouldering her purse and securing her portfolio. Clutching her cane tightly, she followed Saitou to the outer office where they shook hands.
âWait here. Ms. Wilson will be with you shortly. And remember, Iâm counting on you.â Saitou gave Alice a warm smile and disappeared into her office.
Dazed, Alice sat at a nearby vacant workstation, its former occupant no doubt a victim of the vicious budget cuts at the agency. The building was like a tomb; empty offices, their computer equipment stripped, lined the hallways. Idly she opened a desk drawer; the odor of dust bunnies entangled in a rotten rubber band and bent paperclips assaulted her.
It wasnât always that way. She remembered the past: employees bustling, going about important business. Sighing, she gently closed the drawer. Footsteps echoing along the cavernous hall caused Alice to look up. A young woman approached.
âHi, Iâm Jane Wilson. Commissioner Feldstein promised that you would interview CP tomorrow.â Wilson glanced at her watch and handed Alice a ticket to Houston. Youâll need to get to the airport ASAP. Iâll call you later.â
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***
Alice squeezed into a middle seat on the plane, one of the few  spaces left, and reluctantly stowed her cane along with her winter coat in the overhead bin. Sheâd been dependent on a walking stick for the last ten years and dreaded what would happen when its support wasnât enough. Drawing her elbows into her side, she closed her eyes and tried to relax, but the cabin was stifling. Sweat began to form on her brow. Already, her anxiety was sky- high. Sheâd had it under control for years, but could she keep it in check with this new assignment?
Truth be told, Alice was flat burned-out and cruising toward retirement. This new assignment would exhaust her even more. Each case  she touched was a mini soap opera. The CPs were usually hurt and angry,  but most of the time, something besides discrimination was causing their problems at work. Bad supervisors, unfair treatmentâyou name it. And then some were simply downright unreasonable. Only last week one complainant became angry when Aliceâs investigator couldnât find discrimination, and Alice had to intervene personally. The CP had only been on the job for two months and was being written up for performance, at which point she had yelled discrimination. Apparently, she had forged most of her rĂ©sumĂ© and didnât have the requisite skills to perform the position. Yet the woman couldnât understand why she was about to be fired.
Whenever Alice made a decision, one party was unhappy. Frankly, sheâd had enough of all the drama and negativity. If most of the cases were legitimately discrimination, her job wouldnât be so bad; unfortunately, those cases were few and far between.
Regrettably, Alice needed to work at least another eighteen months until she was eligible for early retirement. With all the agencyâs budget issues, her position might be eliminated, and she could be demoted, or worse yet, laid off. Successfully completing this new assignment would hopefully buy her some time.
After takeoff, Alice eased her seat back and tried to nap. Images of her mother in happier times flitted through her mind. As a single parent, her mother had taken a bookkeeping job at an auto parts store. The manager was totally inept, and her mother had run the entire operation single-handedly  for years, ordering stock, hiring and supervising employees, and creating advertising campaigns. When the manager retired, the owner hired a newly graduated high school football star and told her mother to train him before letting her go.
The years following Momâs termination were tough on Alice. As an older woman with no higher education, her mother found it difficult to land a good-paying, full-time job. The bitterness and disappointment of working dead-end positions fueled Momâs alcohol consumption. Eventually, she lost even those lousy assignments because of spotty attendance, leaving Alice to care for her financially.
Alice had urged her to get help for her drinking, to no avail. Helpless, she watched her motherâs painful decline. Mom ultimately succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver.
Angry with her own impotence, Alice had sworn on her motherâs deathbed that she would make sure discrimination didnât happen to any other women. To that end, she quit her accounting job and went to work for the EEOC in the Atlanta office.
Still, Alice dreaded the stress that was sure to come with the new assignment. When she felt pressured, like her mother, she had found that only alcohol could ease her anxiety, and she absolutely didnât need to start drinking again. Alice rubbed her aching leg and searched her purse for relief from an excruciating headache. Sheâd simply have to find a way other than alcohol to deal with her angst.
***
ATLANTA DISTRICT OFFICE ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Inman Parker stared at the e-mail in disbelief. Jackson had a stroke! But heâs my age, Inman thought. It canât be. It wasnât that long ago that the two of  us started working for the EEOC in Atlanta. Glancing around his office, he spied the picture of him and Jackson as they accepted an award for successfully prosecuting a consequential case against one of Georgiaâs largest employers.
As Inman looked, he realized heâd been sitting in the same chair, at the same desk, in the same office, at the same location for the last ten years. The dark scuff marks from chairs banging against the white wall hadnât even been touched up since heâd moved in.
Suddenly he felt stale. Lately, heâd been wondering âwhat if?â He had a wife, Shirley, who loved him, two wonderful adult children, and a career as  a civil rights attorney, but it wasnât enough. Something was gnawing at him, but what exactly? What if something happened to him and he never had the opportunity to fill that void?
He and Jackson had recently had a conversation about that very same thing. Jacksonâs way of shaking things up had been to accept a volunteer assignment in Austin to work on a team to uncover discrimination suitable for litigation. Because it had been voluntary, with no moving expenses paid, Inman had passed on the same assignment. But nowâŠmaybe thatâs just what he needed to counter his malaise.
Inman toyed with talking to his supervisor but thought better of it. With Jackson out, his boss would prefer Inman to stay put. So, he went over his managerâs head and e-mailed General Counsel Weber, the head of the EEO legal department, asking if he could replace Jackson. After all, how many times had Inman heard you should ask for forgiveness rather than for permission? He received a quick yes, emphasizing that there were no moving reparations. Weber said Inman should report to the Austin office on Monday.
Then Inman became alarmed. How was he going to explain his decision to Shirley? He didnât even understand it himself.
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This is a book I wish I could say more about. When we first meet our main character, Alice, she is burnt out to the point of exhaustion and eighteen months short of her early retirement date. Finding out she's being transferred under the rouse of volunteering to take the role within a new office of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission in Texas, she, of course, isn't very happy. Her unease with her new role not only stems from her own exhaustion with her job, but her battle with alcoholism is also beginning to take its toll on her day-to-day, and then there's her team...Or should I say a bunch of colleagues with little to nothing in common? This is when I started to veer off this book, but before we get to what I didn't enjoy, I'm going to mention what I did.
Firstly, I found Alice to be quite a resilient main character in the face of the endless troubles she faced from her team, her superiors and her own mental health issues. Her constant dedication to her job, even recognising her own biases and developing upon them in regards to victims is something I think many in high-pressure roles can relate too, and if they can't, bias recognition should be learnt. Just because one represents victims, no one can be guilty until proven so.
Secondly, I found the writing in this book to flow fairly well in setting the scenes we find our characters in. The cases are typically well thought out and detailed based heavily in the real cases the EEOC would actually conduct investigations into. As a law student, I enjoyed this, seeing how the author's real-life experiences have integrated realistically and skillfully into the storyline.
This all being said, however, there are some points for improvement within this book. Firstly, while I condemn Alice's character for recognising her biases, it's often a day late and a dollar short, particularly when it comes to one of her team, a former ex-con named JJ. JJ had served 20 years in prison for aggravated assault and Alice makes sure everyone and their granny knows she's not happy about this. If it's mentioned once, it's mentioned a thousand times. Also, the inadequacy of Alice's team probably would reflect current day mindsets within equality commissions, not only do we meet a homophobe, but we also have an ableist and a racist. Clearly the people you'd want caring for you in an equality related crisis. I understand these characteristics are added to the characters to make them seem more realistic and give them a basis to grow from, but I felt like it was simply used for character development rather than showing the structural problems that often exist within government agencies.
This is a perfect read for those who want a story that isn't ACTION BAM ACTION. This is more a lull, a gentle brew of sorts. Enjoyable but not without flaws.
Trigger Warning: Sexual assault, homophobia, racism, ableism, violence, mental health problems, addiction