Liza Nash Taylor's second novel, In All Good Faith, tells a compelling, insightful story of two women whose lives intertwine unexpectedly during the Great Depression. May Marshall Craig, the protagonist of Taylor's debut novel, Etiquette for Runaways, has returned from Paris to her Virginia hometown, where she's running her family's market and caring for her two young children. When a family tragedy forces her lawyer husband to accept a job in Washington, May takes on even more responsibility at home. But financial worries and a long-distance partnership put a growing strain on her marriage.
In Boston's West End, shy Dorrit Sykes is grieving her mother's death, pinching pennies from her seamstress work and wrestling with doubts about her family's Christian Science faith. Eventually, Dorrit travels with her father to Washington, D.C., for a veterans' march, encountering people and situations wildly different from any in her previous experience. The two women cross paths some months after the march, and their encounter will change both their lives.
Told in both women's voices, Taylor's narrative touches on faith in the religious sense, but far more important is the faith that both women learn to place in themselves and each other, plus a small circle of loved ones. In All Good Faith is both a quiet, unflinching account of daily privations during the Depression and a story of women fighting to have their ideas taken seriously. Ultimately, though, despite tragedy and sorrow, it is an uplifting story of friendship and hope. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams