<p>“While Justice Sleeps,” Stacey Abrams (Doubleday)</p>
<p>“While Justice Sleeps” is a deftly written page-turner — understated action, vivid characters and a tense, plausible plot.</p>
<p>The author, a former Georgia House of Representatives member and current political miracle worker Stacey Abrams has created a political thriller: Supreme Court justice Howard Wynn, suffering from a rare illness, falls into a coma, leaving his young law clerk, Avery Keene, as his legal guardian with power of attorney. </p>
<p>Keene soon finds herself the key figure in the planned merger of an American biotech company and an Indian genetics company. At stake, a weaponized genetic editing capability and the tenure of a corrupt American president. Wynn is the swing vote on the merger and his fate now is controlled by Keene.</p>
<p>Keene is a compelling heroine, clearly bright, principled and devoted. She’s also multi-ethnic, personifying, as Abrams observed in an interview, America’s journey toward becoming a multi-ethnic nation.</p>
<p>The characters in the book also allow Abrams subtle observations on America.</p>
<p>Keene describes America to her boss, Justice Wynn, as “contradictory and precocious” and Americans as “greedy, brilliant, ambitious and compassionate.”</p>
<p>“While Justice Sleeps” also shows the how a stiffly polarized political scene endangers democracy; the story arc also raises questions about the wisdom of lifetime Supreme Court appointments, the use and abuse of genetic editing and difficulty of bringing a criminal president to justice.</p>
<p>How did a tax attorney, founder of several voting rights, training and social issues organizations and now a national political figure become a storyteller and find the time to write a complicated, technically demanding 369-page novel?</p>
<p>Abrams started writing in college, eventually crafting a series of romance novels and transitioning to topical books — “Our Time is Now” and “Lead from the Outside.”</p>
<p>Abrams says she sleeps just five hours a day and can write 3,000 words a day, seven times the length of this review.</p>
<p>Abrams says she will run for office again and given her considerable role in getting two Democratic senators elected in Georgia, she will be a formidable candidate.</p>
<p>And Avery Keene?</p>
<p>The book ends with Keene, having thwarted the forces of darkness, nonetheless jobless but young, idealistic and courageous.</p>
<p>We will see Avery again, the author says. No doubt we will be seeing more of Abrams, too.</p>
