Both Career and Love

Anne Rankin Mahoney wanted a career as a college teacher, as well as a family in which both partners had careers and shared family responsibilities. At Northwestern University she discovered that being a woman in a male-dominated profession was like competing in the Olympics after winning her first swim meet. Finding a man who wanted to share family life was even more difficult. In 1961, she moved to New York City, the setting for most of her memoir. She initially worked for the Vera Institute of Justice on research designed to help indigent defendants gain release from jail before trial without paying bail. This historic work created impetus for national work on bail reform. But Anne's "urge for more," as she called it, kept drawing her into new situations, including more graduate work and travel to Europe, where she fell in love. Anne's memoir is a positive, sometimes humorous love story about a young woman who wanted more than her generation offered.