"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-of how she rose to her historic position on the Supreme Court, and the personal sacrifices she made along the way. From falling helplessly in love in law school, to navigating an unplanned pregnancy and motherhood, to figuring out how to spar with a sexist mentor and win, Sylvia's intimate story shows who she was before she wore the robe: a daughter, a best friend, a lover, a wife, a mother. Her personal life may have been caught in a dramatic tug of war between the competing desires of love and morality, truth and convenience, ambition and kindness, but her stubbornness, zeal, and persistent hope would change the course of American history. Weaving vivid historical events into the titillating emotional life of a fascinating fictional character, Elizabeth Silver immerses readers in a nuanced drama that turns out to have supreme stakes"--