Another Rave Review for “The War on Sarah Morris”

Midwest Book Review’s Small Press Bookwatch’s Review of The War on Sarah Morris

July 2024

(https://www.midwestbookreview.com/sbw/jul_24.htm)

The War on Sarah Morris
Kathleen Jones
Legacy Book Press
9798987482346, $17.99, PB, 245pp

https://www.amazon.com/War-Sarah-Morris-Kathleen-Jones/dp/B0CVQ28JYC

Synopsis: What happens when one day, without any warning, your secure corporate job suddenly becomes precarious? And all your professional duties are taken away, leaving you with nothing but repetitive, mind-numbing tasks?

Sarah Morris, is a 49-year-old editor at a Toronto publishing company who finds herself in this very predicament when Quill Pen Press, the company she has faithfully served for twenty-one years, undergoes a reorganization in the aftermath of the 2008 recession.

Concerned only with preserving her own cushy job, Sarah’s selfish boss gives all the company’s editing projects to freelancers and to a pet employee, unofficially demoting Sarah and two colleagues, who are now expected to spend their days tagging and formatting documents. When the two younger colleagues leave to pursue better opportunities, the boss dumps all their data entry tasks on Sarah and pressures her to complete an ever-growing mountain of work in less and less time, while taking away her right to paid overtime.

At first, Sarah is afraid to face the truth; she tells herself that she will get her old job back once the economy improves. But when the boss starts bullying her, she realizes that her company doesn’t have her best interests at heart and that she’s been pigeonholed into a dead-end job.

Critique: A story for our times, “The War on Sarah Morris” by author Kathleen Jones is an inherently compelling, deftly crafted, and showcases her narrative driven and impressively distinctive storytelling style as a novelist. A work of fiction that may well resonate with the reader’s real life experiences all too well, “The War on Sarah Morris” is especially and unreservedly recommended for community library Contemporary General Fiction collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that “The War on Sarah Morris” is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $5.99).

Editorial Note: For some thirty years, Kathleen Jones (https://kathleenjones.org) has been an editor for various Canadian book publishers. Today, Kathleen is a full-time author who writes for a number of popular book blogs. She also contributes monthly book reviews to Goodreads. She lives in Canada.