It’s a pleasure to be welcoming A.M. Soliman to Novel Kicks as we shine a light on his latest book, The Name She Carries

Some inherit a name. She had to earn hers.

Mary Adel learned the law watching her father command courtrooms. Now Zach Adel — the legend who taught her everything — is running out of time, and the case of his career has just passed into her hands.

The clients don’t want money. Aisha Reynolds was dismissed in an ER triage line — four words typed into her chart, possible drug-seeking behavior — and her family wants the truth spoken in open court. No settlement. No sealed record.

It’s the kind of case that made Zach’s name. Now it will test Mary’s. Alone at counsel table, against the hospital’s lawyers and her own firm’s doubts, she must decide what kind of lawyer — and what kind of daughter — she is going to be.

Below, we chat to A.M. Soliman but first, he’s shared an extract from The Name She Carries. We hope you enjoy. 

*****beginning of extract*****

Aisha Reynolds had spent most of her life keeping time for other people: pickups, drop-offs, lunch schedules, and closing hours. Time meant order. If you arrived on time, you were seen in order.

The clock above triage read 10:42 p.m. on the night of February thirteenth. She stood at the intake desk with one hand pressed lightly against her right side. She was fifty-one, dark-skinned, and composed. The kind of posture shaped by decades of lifting other people’s children without complaint. Her dark hair was pulled into a low twist, early silver at the temples catching the fluorescent light. A thin gold cross rested against her collarbone, half-hidden beneath her coat.

The pain had begun as pressure that afternoon. By the evening it sharpened. By ten o’clock it had begun to move, downward, inward, and deep enough to make her pause mid-sentence.

“I’ve had worsening abdominal pain for about six hours,” she said carefully. “It’s getting severe.”

The triage nurse looked up.

Her badge read:

Karen Whitfield, R.N.

“Pain scale?”

“I would say eight.”

Whitfield’s eyes lifted briefly.

“You drove yourself?”

“Yes, because my husband is traveling.”

“Any vomiting?”

“Yes, once earlier.”

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