Sarah Morris faces a problem: After working for decades with one publishing company, she’s reassigned to work with lesser responsibilities. Instead of editing books, she’s merely tagging them – boring, repetitive work. Unfortunately, this reassignment corresponds to a weakening of the country’s economy and of the wider publishing industry. She has no way to go; she’s trapped. Her friends with whom she has labored in the trenches for years are now losing their jobs.
Most of us can relate to her situation. Our work often is a mix of hedonistic pleasure and economic survival. When economic survival takes the fore, personal fulfillment often drops to the background. Even if we haven’t experienced Sarah Morris’ plight firsthand, we face it through our subconscious fears.
Sarah struggles to find other employment and to cope with an increasingly toxic workplace. Those who encounter themselves in these themes – and the topic of toxic workplaces is certainly trending these days – can find Sarah’s advance countered with every conceivable maneuver to push her sanity. Economic survival is not fun. Nonetheless, a good ending transpires in the end… but only after Sarah does a great deal of soul searching. Author Kathleen Jones invites us to search our own souls as we empathize with Sarah’s.
This book offers a personal account that’s heavily centered on one person: Sarah Morris. It does not focus much on wider economic scenarios. What is someone to do in a failing industry? Could Sarah have tapped into her core creativity sooner? I didn’t find much self-critique in the protagonist until very late in the book. She attacked others as the root of her plight instead of looking at her wider options. Though I don’t blame Sarah for her plight, I do recognize that economic survival in a weakening economy isn’t always enjoyable. But food still has to go on the table.
Because of the large amount of adversity that Sarah faces, workers like me can prepare themselves for such inevitable adversity. Sarah has just about every device thrown at her to hamper her personal fulfillment. Though still wounded by her experiences in the end, she comes out triumphant against corporate forces bigger than herself. The impersonal forces of ageism and sexism also play significant roles in this story and can draw in readers facing similar bigotry. Sarah Morris’ central humanity rises victorious in the end, but not until it is tested in its economic core.
The War on Sarah Morris
By Kathleen Jones
Copyright (c) 2024
Legacy Book Press
ISBN13 9798987482346
Page Count: 237
Genre: Fiction/Stories
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