During the first couple of chapters of Heidi Pitlor’s IMPERSONATION, readers might assume that her novel will be a #MeToo chronicle, as ghostwriter Allie Lang’s latest client, a reality-TV celebrity, gets in hot water for past sexual misconduct (something Allie is entirely unsurprised by, given how he has treated her during their few in-person meetings).

But this part of Allie’s story, which begins in 2016, predates the #MeToo campaign by a couple of years. The #MeToo movement reenters Allie’s narrative near the novel’s end, but in the middle, she finds herself embroiled in a new client-writer relationship that is insidious and confusing in its own way.

"IMPERSONATION has so many rich layers for readers to fold back and appreciate.... Allie’s bittersweet story offers a nuanced portrait of a woman coming to terms with all different sorts of imperfections --- and learning to relish moments of grace whenever she can find them."

Allie is a single mom by choice (more or less). Now in her mid-40s, she’s doing her best to raise her four-year-old son, Cass, while also holding together various part-time jobs (landscaping, substitute teaching) to supplement her more lucrative (but hardly lucrative enough) ghostwriting gigs. After the dust begins to settle from the television star’s unsavory scandal, Allie is thrilled when she is hired to write a motherhood memoir for Lana Breban, a high-profile lawyer and feminist activist with political aspirations. This book, Allie’s 11th (though you wouldn’t know it, since her nondisclosure agreements swear her to absolute secrecy), promises to be her most lucrative and relevant book yet. Perhaps she can finally put Cassidy in a consistent preschool rather than turning to her elderly and increasingly unreliable neighbor for discount childcare.

But Allie’s initial meetings and email exchanges with Lana are perplexing. Lana is tight-lipped about any kind of personal details --- which is somewhat problematic when Allie is supposed to be writing her memoir. Instead, Lana encourages Allie to lean into research and theories, on everything from breastfeeding to gender norms to Montessori education. Allie tries to oblige, but she also knows that readers (not to mention Lana’s editor) are going to want more details about Lana’s life, insights into her experiences as a feminist mother raising her only son.

So in the absence of any useful input from Lana, where can Allie turn? To her own life, of course. Even as she grows increasingly frustrated with Lana’s reticence, and even as the extended timeline of Lana’s book wreaks havoc on Allie’s finances, she finds herself mining her own experiences of motherhood and her observations of her young son for material. In so doing, she is given the opportunity to reflect on her approach to parenthood, her love toward and fears for her son, and her increasing anxieties --- especially after the unexpected 2016 presidential election results --- about raising a son in Trump’s America.

IMPERSONATION has so many rich layers for readers to fold back and appreciate. Writers will find themselves chuckling at many of Pitlor’s observations about the realities of their craft; parents will recognize themselves in Allie’s blend of fierce love and outright exhaustion; and readers with an eye for politics and social movements will appreciate Allie’s growing confusion and disorientation about finding her place --- and a place for her son --- in this increasingly alienating country. Allie’s bittersweet story offers a nuanced portrait of a woman coming to terms with all different sorts of imperfections --- and learning to relish moments of grace whenever she can find them.