Call Waiting

Emma is turning thirty-one, and her new relationship with Jack seems to be going well. Then Jack leaves for a business trip on her birthday. The trip includes a striking, curvy coworker, and a strange ring turns up in his underwear drawer, one that is clearly not meant for Emma in either size or taste. Emma tells herself there is nothing to fret about, but Jack increasingly looks like the commitment-shy man she feared. Michelle Cunnah, a newer author, fills the story with warm, memorable characters.

Emma's worries are not her only distraction. She inherits nine and a half historic inches of fence that a long-lost aunt chained herself to while fighting for women's rights. The inheritance pulls Emma into the Hoboken United Sisters Suffragette Institution, or HUSSI. Jack is too absorbed in his work, and Emma hopes not in his co-worker, to help her get free of the group.

Emma begins to suspect that the only way to win back Jack's attention is to chain herself to a fence and burn her bra, and she is more than willing to try it.