(Ed. Note: I’ll admit that I’m not quite so reconstructed that I’ve become a big reader of Doris Lessing or Margaret Atwood. But Bonnie Rozanski and Marge Piercy? Once I start reading I can’t put them down, because it’s about characters and story more than doctrine. -S.W.)

Here’s the set-up:

The year is 2011, the place, New York City. A mysterious microbe has begun to infect women of child-bearing age. Though the medical establishment writes it off as a simple flu, and the epidemic appears to be dying out, a young New York obstetrician confronts a conundrum. In the past year, the ratio of boys to girls born in her practice has declined precipitously. Dr. Deborah Kruger suspects the truth: that infected women are no longer able to give birth to male children.

With the help of her husband Larry, a computer analyst, Deborah tracks the epicenter to New York City, from which the infection is already bursting forth. And, as years pass, despite hundreds of laboratories at work on it, the microbe continues to overrun borders and envelop the Earth. With Science unable to stop it, and the contagion rippling worldwide in an AIDS-like pandemic, how will society cope in an increasingly female world?

Unquestionably, some changes are inevitable. Companies hire more women; who assume more leadership positions, replacing the male hierarchy with their own female style of management, to great success. Among the younger generation, monogamy is increasingly replaced by polygamy. Wars decrease. Crime falls. Football attendance is down. Ballet is up.

“Y” follows three New York City families for an entire generation, each with its own story. The blue-collar husband proves unable to deal with a wife who has become the major bread-winner. The yuppie husband does well in his career but cannot resist the temptations of a workplace with limitless young women. His wife, turned off from men entirely, will leave him and become a force to reckon with in her own right. And, along the way, the children of all three families struggle to find mates and to secure their own places in this new, topsy-turvy world.

“Rozanski’s “Y” is a great story that keeps the reader engaged from beginning to end. It takes the battle of the sexes debate to a whole newer and smaller (i.e. microbial) level. There are definitely moments where the feminist in me wanted to shout with joy in a XX chromosome moment of female empowerment, while at other times I wanted to weep for the dwindling number of men and the reality that this could be the end of the human race as we know it. This is a fun, easy read. I highly recommend it…“

About the Author

Bonnie is an author and prize-winning playwright currently living in New Jersey. Born in Queens, New York, she has lived in Hong Kong, Canada and all over the US. With degrees in Psychology and Artificial Intelligence, always fascinated by the human mind, Bonnie writes on matters touching on consciousness and the human condition.

BANANA KISS, Bonnie’s debut novel, told from the point of view of a young schizophrenic girl, came out to excellent reviews in 2005. Her second novel, BORDERLINE, was a YA finalist at the 2007 Foreword Book of the Year, as well as a silver medalist at that year’s Independent Publisher Books awards. Bonnie has several other equally wonderful manuscripts in the wings, awaiting the perspicacious publisher who recognizes their brilliance.

Visit Amazon’s Bonnie Rozanski Page