Making It Up as I Go Along

Meet Saffron Roch, a California native who's living her life's dream by traveling the world as a war correspondent. She's found what she thinks is love with Oscar, a surgeon working for Doctors Without Borders, whose enormous ego has more to do with his overcompensation than his surgical skill. But Saffron, whose daily mantra is to seek the truth, refuses to see what is right before her eyes: Oscar's infidelity, the attraction she feels for another man, and a war that's about to spill out into the very streets where she lives. When Saffron discovers that she's pregnant with her cheating surgeon's child (read; knocked-up, newly jobless and single at 38) and learns that she is to inherit a ten-million-dollar fortune back home, she moves to Los Angeles and throws herself into motherhood. She joins the trendy breast-feeding support group at the Pump Station, where she meets a group of mothers who seem overly superficial and egocentric at first. But they turn out to have quite a bit teach Saffron. Making It Up as I Go Along is a compelling story about the choices that every modern woman confronts, and how, in the face of such decisions, she remains true to herself.

"When 38-year-old war correspondent Saffron Roch quits Sierra Leone, pregnant with her unfaithful lover's child, she heads to London to have baby Halla and then returns to her native California to find herself catapulted into two new, unnerving conflicts. There's that single-motherhood business, for one, and then there's the fact that she's netted a $10-million estate from her adoptive mother, Heaven, whose disinherited birth son, the tofu-eating pseudo-guru Francis, seems weirdly okay with it. Meeting other new moms at the Pump Station, a haven for Malibu mommies that pushes breast-feeding and 'bath products that Catherine Zeta-Jones used,' gives Saff a much-needed boost, even if she's 'better prepared at ambushing a pocket of Chechen rebels than... having brunch at Barney's with a baby in tow.' Lennon ably shows Saff's growing friendship with her fellow moms; she also, through flashbacks, reveals Saff's complicated past in Sierra Leone — her troubles with Halla's father, the surgeon Oscar; her attraction to Joseph, a beautiful, mysterious African — while weaving quite a present-day plot. Back in Sierra Leone, Joseph may be put to death for treason, while in Malibu, Francis is cooking up a plot to get his mom's property back. Lennon's debut is a winning mix of humor and suspense. (June) " Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Newly jobless and single at 38, Saffron Roch discovers that she's pregnant with her cheating boyfriend's child. She moves to Los Angeles and joins a trendy breast-feeding support group, where she meets a group of mothers who seem overly superficial and egocentric at first, but turn out to have quite a bit to teach Saffron.

When California-born war correspondent Saffron Roch discovers that she’s pregnant (read: knocked-up, newly jobless, and single at thirty-eight), she decides to leave Sierra Leone and surgeon Oscar DeVries, the baby’s cheating father who, despite his huge ego and surprisingly small member, had captured her heart.

So Saffron turns in her backstage pass to the violent dissolution of third-world countries and returns home to Los Angeles, where she is about to inherit a beach property worth a fortune. There she throws herself into motherhood, joining a politically correct breast-feeding support group at the Pump Station. In full-blown culture shock, missing Africa, Saffron comes face to face with a group of unlikely women friends and a roomful of Scud nipples that, on looks alone, could bring any rogue nation to its knees.

Making It Up As I Go Along is a dazzling debut novel that questions the very meaning of motherhood, home, and family, while offering an unforgettable look at the camaraderie of women who, across borders and generations, teach Saffron a thing or two about what matters most in life.

An honor graduate of the London School of Economics, Maria T. Lennon now finds herself living under a heap of Disney paraphernalia in a slightly disheveled tree house in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles, with her husband, three children, a dog, three cats, and a caterpillar named Harry.