The Foundation

Evelyn Hart's first word after waking from a three-week coma is No. She underlines it until she tears the paper. She doesn't know yet what she's refusing. She knows she's refusing it completely.

Recovery is a series of humiliations: sit up, breathe, walk five steps, accept help. She hates all of it. She does it anyway. She goes back to Hart & Wallace once — in a green sweater instead of a black suit, carrying a resignation letter she has been carrying for eleven days — and walks out of the building with one cardboard box and the beginning of a plan she cannot yet name.

The Foundation is the story of a woman rebuilding herself from the inside out — not into who she was before, but into something that can hold its own weight. It is the harder of the two books, and the better one.

Book Two of the Evelyn Hart Duology.