Counting Backwards

April 9, 2025April 9, 2025 by onemoreexclamation

Welcome to the Counting Backwards by Jacqueline Friedland book tour hosted by Suzy Approved Book Tours.

About Counting Backwards

counting backwards book cover by jacqueline friedland

Title: Counting Backwards

Author: Jacqueline Friedland

Released: March 11, 2025

Find it: Amazon

New York, 2022. Jessa Gidney is trying to have it all–a high-powered legal career, a meaningful marriage, and hopefully, one day, a child. But when her professional ambitions come up short and Jessa finds herself at a turning point, she leans into her family’s history of activism by taking on pro bono work at a nearby ICE detention center. There she meets Isobel Pérez–a young mother fighting to stay with her daughter–but as she gets to know Isobel, an unsettling revelation about Isobel’s health leads Jessa to uncover a horrifying pattern of medical malpractice within the detention facility. One that shockingly has ties to her own family.

Virginia, 1927

Carrie Buck is an ordinary young woman in the center of an extraordinary legal battle at the forefront of the American eugenics conversation. From a poor family, she was only six years old when she first became a ward of the state. Uneducated and without any support, she spends her youth dreaming about a different future–one separate from her exploitative foster family–unknowing of the ripples her small, country life will have on an entire nation.

As Jessa works to assemble a case against the prison and the crimes she believes are being committed there, she discovers the landmark Supreme Court case involving Carrie Buck. Her connection to the case, however, is deeper and much more personal than she ever knew–sending her down new paths that will leave her forever changed and determined to fight for these women, no matter the cost.

Alternating between the past and present, and deftly tackling timely-yet-timeless issues such as reproductive rights, incarceration, and society’s expectations of women and mothers, Counting Backwards is a compelling reminder that progress is rarely a straight line and always hard-won. A moving story of two remarkable women that you’ll remember for years to come.

Book Blurbs

“Like Perkins-Valdez’s Take My Hand, Friedland’s novel exposes a shocking–and even more recent–betrayal of women by government institutions . . . featuring a refreshing twist, [it] is unputdownable, not to mention incredibly resonant in these uncertain times.” –Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Spectacular

‘Friedland gifts readers with richly developed characters in a dual-timeline tale that explores fertility, inequality, and reproductive rights–both past and present with an eye toward the future. Counting Backwards is more than a powerful read, ultimately it teaches us ALL how to move forward.’ — Lisa Barr, New York Times bestselling author of The Goddess of Warsaw

Review for Counting Backwards

I love me a dual timeline! This was a great based-on-a-true-story book with Jessa as our present-day main character, who is a married lawyer putting her career first. When she has trouble conceiving, she becomes obsessed. While working pro bono at the ICE detention center, she uncovers an alarming number of hysterectomies performed without consent. It’s then she discovers Carrie, our 1927 lead, and everything changes in the blink of an eye. The author made it easy to flip between the timelines. I wasn’t too keen on Jessa in the beginning, but fell in love with her character. The author wove these two stories together fantastically, and the story had a good flow. It is an emotional read that is as compelling as it is tragic.

About The Author

Jacqueline Friedland is a USA Today and Amazon bestselling author of historical and contemporary women’s fiction. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, she earned a law degree from NYU and a Master of Fine Arts from Sarah Lawrence College. Jackie regularly reviews fiction for publications and appears at schools and other locations as a guest lecturer. She lives just outside New York City with her husband, four children, and two dogs.

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