Trials

Pax Peyton Ford and Rosa Macario are both New York City judges. More than that, they have bonds of deep affection that go back to when the older Pax played the part of mentor to Rosa, helping to guide her from a childhood in the barrio to a place on the judicial bench. Now each is a candidate for the next vacancy in the state high court. Their friendship could easily survive such competition, but when they are drawn to the same man, a painful rivalry begins. Leonard Scholer is the dynamic defense attorney who initially courted Pax, but she breaks things off when he enters the sensational child-custody case over which she presides. Leonard is soon involved with Rosa.
The custody case throws Pax into the center of a maelstrom of political and social pressure. As she struggles to maintain order, she becomes aware that Leonard is grooming Rosa to supplant her in his life - and in the unspoken struggle for the appellate court seat. Yet she is also in despair of losing her life-long friendship with a woman she considers a sister.
Compellingly told, Trials weaves together courtroom drama, romantic turmoil, and bonds of friendship set against a shimmering backdrop of power and big-city life. By featuring two appealing heroines who pull the reader's heart in opposing directions, Anne Tolstoi Wallach has created a masterful drama that explores divided loyalties and crucial choices, raising women's fiction to a new level of insight and illumination.

Boilerplate sociology and stock characters drive Wallach's workmanlike third novel (after Private Scores and the bestselling Women's Work). New York City trial Judge Pax Peyton Ford is called upon to exercise the cool composure of Portia and the wisdom of Solomon in both her personal and professional lives. She's drawn the custody case of Caitlin California, the six-year-old daughter of billionaire artist Johnny California, whose death has left the child torn between her father's gay lover, famous ballet dancer Tom D'Arcy, and her aunt, the high-strung and narrow-minded Ba Bishop. Making matters trickier for Pax is Ba's marriage to John Talcott Bishop, a member of the screening panel for appointments to the Appellate Division, promotion to which Pax desperately desires. On the personal front, Pax's budding romance with Leonard Scholer, her son's father-in-law, is placed on hold when Leonard signs on as D'Arcy's defense counsel. And Judge Rosa Macario, an old friend of Pax since childhood (when her mother was the Ford family's maid), is becoming both a romantic and a professional rival. In the end, one of the women gets the man and the other gets the coveted appellate judgeship. Wallach keeps the pages turning, albeit at the expense of deep character exploration, but that's less likely to bother readers than the fact that this agreeable entertainment wasn't available for the beach.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Wallach's books sell because they are shrewdly formulaic and topical. Her newest revolves around the friendship (or is it rivalry?) between two New York City women judges, Pax Peyton Ford and Rosa Macario. Predictably, they hail from different sections of the genetic pool. Waspy Pax, the descendant of lawyers and judges, is a tiny, porcelain-skinned 49-year-old widow; Rosa is Puerto Rican, the color of honey, 35, absolutely gorgeous, single, and "up-from-the-barrio." Pax's uptown courtroom is the epitome of oak-paneled luxury; Rosa sits in the Bronx. How did these two diverse but strong-minded women become friends? Rosa's mother was Pax's mother's maid. Now, years later, they find themselves competing for the same man, a rich and sexy lawyer. Complications multiply as quickly as flies, and everyone has some dreadful secret to hide, but the main conflict is a high-profile and extremely controversial custody battle involving Caitlin, the 6-year-old daughter of an impossibly wealthy and famous gay artist known as Johnny California. Caitlin's mother died years ago; now her father has been killed in a skiing accident of all things, and his longtime lover, a ballet dancer named Tom, wants custody of Caitlin, whom he adores. But Johnny's estranged sister rears her ugly head and insists that she should get her niece. What Wallach has wrought here is a perfectly respectable soap opera featuring a cleverly vicious courtroom contest in which homophobia is pitted against dysfunctional family values. Donna Seaman

Wallach's (Private Scores, 1986. o.p.) latest novel is undistinguished. Pax Ford and Rosa Macario are beautiful, competent Manhattan judges who are competing for a higher court appointment. Pax, from a long line of judges, has mentored the younger Hispanic woman, whose mother was a maid for Pax's parents. Complications involve their mutual attraction for Leonard Scholler, an attorney, whose firm is trying a celebrity child custody case involving a gay partner, in Pax's court. Although the plot is interesting, it isn't a barn-burner; nor is there enough scandal to generate big sales. The characters also seem to suffer slightly from ethnic and gender stereotyping. Although billed as contemporary women's fiction, the novel reads more like a typical romance. Purchase only if readers demand by title or type.?Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Hts.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.