Dancing on Broken Glass

January 23, 2012
Thirty-somethings Mickey Chandler and Lucy Houston are married and desperately in love, but like all couples, they have their problems—Mickey is bipolar, and Lucy’s family has a history of breast cancer, which she’s battled once already. In order to preserve their marriage in the face of biological contingencies, they’ve drafted a contract governing their day-to-day lives. However, the rules fail to apply when Lucy discovers that she is pregnant, despite having had a tubal ligation. Three months into the pregnancy, they learn that Lucy’s cancer has returned and spread to her lungs, but she can’t do chemo without having an abortion. She refuses treatment and decides to have the baby. Mickey is devastated at the prospect of losing his wife. In an attempt to prove to Lucy his paternal ineptitude (and convince her to undergo treatment and abort the pregnancy), Mickey begins to act out, blaming it on his bipolarity. So Lucy drafts a contract providing, in the event of her death, for a three-way adoption between Mickey; Lucy’s childless sister, Lily; and Lily’s husband, Ron. Despite an occasional reliance on clichés, Hancock’s debut is an authentic tearjerker—an intimate and touching story that will remain in readers’ hearts. Agent: Mollie Glick, Foundry Literary + Media.

February 1, 2012
An unexpected pregnancy ratchets up the complications for a cancer survivor and her bipolar husband in a three-handkerchief family weepy. Heading off with the character of death on page one of her moral-dilemma debut, Hancock establishes from the outset that she is heading for the emotional jugular. Both her central characters carry genetic predispositions, teacher Lucy Houston to cancer and club-owner Mickey Chandler to mental illness. A multi-clause contract, which includes a ban on children, has safeguarded their 11-year marriage, which is why Lucy, who has had her tubes tied, has mixed feelings about her pregnancy. She has two sisters, childless Lily and bossy Priscilla, and has already survived one serious bout of the disease; Mickey, meanwhile, struggles daily with the risk of mania and has made several trips to the hospital when off his meds. What happens after Lucy is diagnosed with further medical complications is less a plot and more a sequence of character reconfigurations within this schematic scenario. Narrated alternately by Lucy and Mickey, the tale's connective tissue consists of weeping, recriminations, pills, protestations and more weeping, concluding with a final wringing of the reader's exhausted tear ducts via a trifecta of birth, death and Christmas Eve.A tidily crafted but treacly excavation of misery in the name of higher sentiments.

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