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About

A retired social worker, specializing in child welfare cases, I have now turned to writing—and have published five novels, all available on Amazon.com.

I have four grown children and seven grandchildren.

An avid reader, I also enjoy collecting, traveling and going to the movies.

Favorite authors include: Jodi Picoult, Joy Fielding, Sue Miller, Lisa Unger, Joyce Maynard, etc. There are too many to list.

Description

Laura Hoopes takes you along as she tries to enter science in the 1960's in the post-Sputnik science education frenzy, only to find doors closed to women. She persists, makes a career of molecular gerontology and insists on making space for marriage and children in her life. This inspiring read says, "Yes, you can," to women who have dreams of their own.

Reviews

The burden of child abuse follows Meg Graham from her strict fundamentalist upbringing to the Summer of Love. From the time she is ten years old, Meg is determined to escape her father’s controlling grasp, get an education and marry the man of her choice. As a young woman she reaches her goals, but happiness eludes her. Miserable in her marriage, she takes her toddler son and leaves her controlling husband, builds a satisfying career as a social worker, finds emotional support among new women friends and explores the sexual mores of San Francisco in the ’60s. She rejects the conservative values of her childhood through alcohol, pot and (mostly) fleeting relationships with men. She also changes her name to Lainey. The novel’s multiple subplots reflect the messiness of real life but divert focus from Meg/Lainey as the central character. Two subplots in particular—the machinations of sociopathic Gretchen, who orchestrated a rape to blackmail Lainey, and the complex relationship between the artist Rainbow and Natasha, a social worker who years before caused Rainbow to lose custody of her child—could form the core of the story or a separate novel. The question of whether Meg/Lainey was sexually abused as a child hovers over early chapters, but as the story progresses, it is eclipsed by the novel’s other complexities. Only when Lainey begins hypnotherapy do repressed memories of abuse come to the fore, as does her awareness that she is abusing alcohol to bury her feelings about the past. A retired social worker, Snow does an excellent job of capturing the spirit of the ’60s in clothes, interiors, dialogue and attitudes, but the steady onslaught of new characters and subplots diminishes Meg/Lainey as a character. The relationship between Natasha and Rainbow is the strongest part of the book. As they go through the process of betrayal and forgiveness, they emerge as richer characters than Lainey, who, despite her journey of selfrealization, still comes across as a lost soul. A rambling voyage of discovery through the ’60s. Snow, Laurel-Rain WEB OF TYRANNY BookSurge (608 pp.) $23.99 paperback September 3, 2008 ISBN: 978-1-4196-5686-6 Kirkus Discoveries, Nielsen Business Media, 770 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 discoveries@kirkusreviews.com

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Laurel-Rain Snow

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Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling: An American Woman Becomes a DNA Scientist

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Story Behind The Book

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