How to Earn Your Keep
by Deahn Berrini
Four Square Press. 287 pages, $14.
DEAHN BERRINI’S How To Earn Your Keep is a tentative novel, full of almosts. It has aspects of a legal thriller, shadings of chick lit, and something akin to a coming out story, braided into a larger narrative about finding one’s moral compass in trying times. It’s an engaging mix, if hesitant in its delivery.
Twenty-one-year-old Kit Lavoie is living at home. After losing a college scholarship, she’s the sole source of reliable income for her brother Larry and her helpless, dependent mother. Her job with a personal injury lawyer relies on constant fudging of truths and blurring the lines of acceptable behavior. When her boss latches onto a potentially lucrative case, Kit worries about the harm it will do to the defendant. Meanwhile, her brother is breaking up with a girlfriend, meandering from job to job, and might be in love with a boy.
