Hard Time & Nursery Rhymes

What kind of woman leaves three young daughters at home every morning to spend her days representing convicted murderers and rapists? That is the question criminal defense attorney Claudia Trupp confronts in this sharp and riveting memoir as she seeks answers—for herself and, mostly, for her daughters.

Every working mother faces the challenges of balancing work and home, but the nature of Trupp’s work makes her juggling act all the more precarious—and at times hilarious and bizarre. Trupp’s domestic anecdotes of life with her kids run parallel to narratives of her most memorable, and often unsettling, criminal cases, each providing a platform to explore broader issues such as faith, perspective, and charm. The navigation of radically different realms—the criminal courts and maximum security prisons where clients serve hard time, and the home front where children demand marshmallows for breakfast—provides thought-provoking and entertaining reading.

While the working mother has been a popular subject of fiction and self-help guides, this may be the only book offering a woman’s deeply personal and unapologetic account of how embracing a challenging job while simultaneously guiding a family reaps unexpected benefits on both fronts. In a memoir that will resonate powerfully with all women, Trupp candidly conveys to the reader and to her daughters the struggles and rewards of the conflicting roles in her life, the joy she has found in being a mother, and the value of meaningful work.